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[G-Flex]

Scriver, its a disorder because it causes a noted negative impact on the quality of ones life. Which is why it is reasonable to argue that one a person has transitioned, they no longer have it.

I'm not 100% sure I agree with that. I mean, I guess it can permanently take care of the disorder to the point where it doesn't matter anymore, but that treatment has obvious lasting effects and is nowhere near perfect.

At any rate, it's definitely disordered for your brain to expect your body to have different parts than it actually does (or however you want to describe that incongruity). I would agree that a full transition would effectively "cure" it, in a way, but all we can manage at the moment is an extremely rough facsimile of that; a post-transition transsexual is nowhere near physically the same as an individual who naturally developed as that sex. Sure, the dysphoria related to it might be mostly (or completely) taken care of, but the steps taken to do that aren't without flaw. Basically, we can't turn a biological male into a biological female (or vice-versa), we can only modify their physical and hormonal makeup to the point where the end result is similar enough that there's no longer a perceived incongruity between mind and body.

[The Doctor]

I just thought of an analogy of that. Forgive the subject matter, if there is another that is the same manner, please tell me, but it's all I can think of.

The techniques we have to transition between the sexes currently, is like the techniques for cancer treatment. You're certainly better off afterward, but there's that nagging feeling that you aren't -quiet- "cured", aren't quiet finished...


Okay, this made more sense in my head.

[GlyphGryph]

Which is why I said it could be argued, not necessarily that its true.

But honestly, if mentally the person is no longer experiencing mental anguish because of it, I'd be hard pressed to say they still have the disorder, since the mental effects are usually the most important bits of that sort of classification. I think its certainly still POSSIBLE, but that GID wouldn't necessarily apply.

[G-Flex]

To be fair, you could say the same about someone on medication for a disorder (when it works), although in that case, it isn't permanent, so there is a difference.

[Vector]

@Vector: My self-diminishing parts doesn't like insisting like this, but I would very much like your input on my thoughts like in this post and my previous one.

Mostly I'd have to say that at a glance, you seem right on.

Except for one thing: in the United States, at least, all psychological ailments are required to be coupled with dysphoria/impairment (IIRC, things aren't defined that way in other countries).  Since being transgendered tends to cause one a great deal of psychological distress, not all of it simply due to social mores, it's still in the DSM-IV.

Okay, for example: How do you know so much about Greek history?

a. I'm a math student.  Math and logic began in ancient Greece with the philosopher Thales, in 620BC.  I am required to know a lot about this, including dates, circumstances, inventions.
b. I'm a rhetoric student.  Rhetoric, as a field of study, really began in 380BC with Aristotle.  I am required to know a lot about this.
c. I used to study a lot of French literature from around the 1940s--even did an independent study on the subject as a senior in high school.  They had a renewal of interest in Greek Mythology around then, particularly instigated by people like Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus, and Giraudoux.  As such, it helps to have a certain amount of information about the history, and why the Trojan War might be compared to World War One.
d. I have a very good memory.  Close to a week ago, I watched a TV program that mentioned Thespis.  I still remember that the dude stepped out onto stage to deliver the first lines of the first play in Ancient Greece, 534BC, November 23rd.  I've never read the Odyssey, but I know that Homer refers to Dawn as having "rosy-red fingers" over and over and over again due to a short conversation I had with a friend five years ago.
e. I read a lot of Greek myths as a child (a lot about monsters, too!).  Though I don't remember them perfectly, as that was about 10-15 years ago, I also remember the encyclopedia entry I read on them quite clearly.  That set the stage for learning all of this other stuff.
f. We did have to study this stuff in American high school and middle school, as well.
g. One time when I was lovesick, I wikipedia'd "love" and ended up trawling my way through the San Francisco gay bandanna code, love/sexual practices in Ancient Greece, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  I think that at some point I ended up trapped in "color symbolism" for about an hour.


Gotta say, though, I still really don't know as much about it as I'd like to.  Maybe I need to pick up Herodotus to polish up.

The techniques we have to transition between the sexes currently, is like the techniques for cancer treatment. You're certainly better off afterward, but there's that nagging feeling that you aren't -quiet- "cured", aren't quiet finished...

*shrug*

I'd say rather that it's just like anything else that involves successive approximations.  There's a problem, we try to solve it, we get better at solving it as time goes on but that will not fully and completely erase the history of what has existed in times previous.

Doesn't mean the problem isn't fixed enough.

[G-Flex]

Math and logic began in ancient Greece with the philosopher Thales, in 620BC.

You just shot yourself in the foot with this statement, bad.

Math and logic didn't "begin" anywhere. They're necessary parts of human thought and innovation. Yes, the Greeks codified a lot of what wasn't codified before, made a lot of advancements in them, and laid the groundwork for Western culture's conception of those things... but that does not mean they "began" there. In saying what you've said, you've basically deified the Greeks while completely discounting any work in mathematics or philosophy done by anyone who isn't them or their direct cultural descendents.

I understand that Western academia has this huge love affair with ancient Greece, but they weren't magic, or divinely inspired, or the first people to ever exist. Within the context of Western culture (this part is important!), they were vitally important to the initial development of modern ideas concerning logic and mathematics. That's about it. They were far from perfect, and far from the only people ever involved in those pursuits, and like any other culture, they didn't spring out of the Earth fully-formed, either; they, like any other people, must have owed a lot to their predecessors.

I'd say rather that it's just like anything else that involves successive approximations.  There's a problem, we try to solve it, we get better at solving it as time goes on but that will not fully and completely erase the history of what has existed in times previous.

Doesn't mean the problem isn't fixed enough.

Define "enough". I'm sure there are plenty of trans people out there who don't exactly like the fact that they, for instance, can no longer have children, or require lifelong hormone treatments, or have genitalia of some highly variable level of functionality. In my opinion, you say "fixed enough" because it's significantly better than nothing and there's really no other point of reference. When I look at the current methods for transitioning, I see a lot of difficult work that still needs doing, whether it's from the continued physical angle or from a more neurologically-oriented approach.

[Virex]

GID (Gender Identity Disorder

This is some of what I was referring to this morning/night - those classifications just seem inherently wrong and biased to me. I mean, I lean towards believing "transsexualism" is a psychological condition, but if so, I think my "cissexualism" is equally much of a psychological condition, just as much of a construct of the mind. I don't see the point of calling one a "identity disorder" and the other "normality" (or identity order?). Your gender might not be "matching up" with your body, but why is your body the baseline, when it is the personality/identity you've that were built in it that makes you you?

I don't know if there's a baseline or if you're just assuming a baseline here, but if there is one, then it is because many are obsessed with categorizing the world around. Since to categorize someone you need to know that person's gender and the most effective way to determine someone's gender is to take a look at that person's ding-dong's, the bodily characteristics are used as a baseline.


However, I think that Gender Identity disorder just refers to an apparent discrepancy between someone's outward gender and someone's psychological gender, for which no baseline is needed.

[Vector]

Thales wrote the first proof we've ever found reference to and, so far as we know, began the modern practices of scientific inquiry rather than continuing with the mythologizing practices otherwise pursued by the ancients.  Even after him we had the bullshit with the Pythagoreans worshiping numbers and (theoretically) redirecting rivers through cities they didn't like.  Divinely inspired?  No, I don't think so.  Same goes for that thing I mentioned where women were on par with slaves.  What on earth makes you think I'd be deifying these people?

I should revise: mathematics and logic, as we know them, as fields of study with serious practitioners, entered Western civilization in this manner as far as we know.  I don't have a love affair with ancient Greece.  I don't think the Greeks were perfect.  Yes, I am well aware of the work in Babylon, China, Egypt, the Middle East, etc.  I'm also aware that a lot (most) of their methods were really fucking flawed.

Here, proof that I know of the work of others.  The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, which is the oldest known written mathematics and consists of problems and their solutions, without methods.  Methods.  The things that define the modern practice of mathematics, rather than applications.

Perhaps I should have been more clear.  However, I would thank you kindly to ask questions, rather than making assumptions about my education and attitudes.  Someone wrote the first proof, and as far as we know Thales was it--Thales' Theorem, that a triangle inscribed in a semicircle must always possess a right angle.  Mathematics without proof is mysticism.  Find me an earlier proof-writer and I'll attribute to them instead.  Similarly, find me an earlier female mathematician than Hypatia (... also ancient and Greek), and I'll look up to her.


As far as "good enough" goes, I wasn't trying to say that better wasn't worth striving for.

On the other hand, I'm not one to think I can judge that post-op transgendered people just aren't cis-gendered enough, or say it's never quite there.  That's not my business to speak about.

[G-Flex]

Perhaps I should have been more clear.  However, I would thank you kindly to ask questions, rather than making assumptions about my education and attitudes.  Someone wrote the first proof, and as far as we know Thales was it--Thales' Theorem, that a triangle inscribed in a semicircle must always possess a right angle.  Mathematics without proof is mysticism.  Find me an earlier proof-writer and I'll attribute to them instead.  Similarly, find me an earlier female mathematician than Hypatia (... also ancient and Greek), and I'll look up to her.

Fair enough, and I apologize for coming off a little harsh, but you have to watch yourself when you say things like "invented mathematics". Although you can't deny that one reason we value those proofs so much is because we've inherited their culture. Well, at least to a point; I'm just trying to account for the fact that inevitably, one reason we consider them so important is because they're damn near a direct predecessor of our own culture and therefore we care about many of the same things and see many of the same things in the same way.

I admit I haven't done nearly as much research into this as you seem to have done, but judging by a cursory glance on the Internet, it seems that formal logic systems were also developed in Indian independently (and roughly contemporaneously, I guess) of the Greeks. It's also likely, or at least possible, that other cultures valued logic as well, but simply weren't as formal about it (our modern academic emphasis on this formality being a pretty Greek thing in itself). Yeah, I'm aware that "informal logic" sounds kind of bizarre, but I think you get my point that one factor here in the Western academic tradition valuing Greek formal systems is that the Western academic tradition is basically a successor to the Greek academic tradition. If our society had, one way or another, progressed along differently lines, with different progenitors, we'd probably be saying similar things about them.

Regarding "scientific inquiry", that's a bit of a sticky wicket. Mankind has always used some form of proto-scientific empirical reasoning, and the line between what is and isn't "scientific" isn't always very clear, with a pretty broad spectrum between the two existing in most cultures regardless of where that culture leans in general. I know that one advancement the Muslim world made in the Middle Ages related to the criticism of Greeks as not being scientific or empirical enough, and cultures prior to those Greeks (or at least independent of them) weren't always unscientific either (see: certain Egyptian medical texts, and although much of Chinese science and technology came to being well after this period, I can't be certain what the connection is between them and the Greeks). Science has never really been a boolean "you're doing it or you're not" kind of deal.

I'm not trying to discount the work of the Greeks, but considering what the traditional attitude towards them is, I can't help but try to identify confounding factors that contribute to our attitudes now. And just to be clear, the "love affair" comment was directed towards academia in general, not you specifically.

[Virex]

Perhaps I should have been more clear.  However, I would thank you kindly to ask questions, rather than making assumptions about my education and attitudes.  Someone wrote the first proof, and as far as we know Thales was it--Thales' Theorem, that a triangle inscribed in a semicircle must always possess a right angle.  Mathematics without proof is mysticism.  Find me an earlier proof-writer and I'll attribute to them instead.  Similarly, find me an earlier female mathematician than Hypatia (... also ancient and Greek), and I'll look up to her.

Fair enough, and I apologize for coming off a little harsh, but you have to watch yourself when you say things like "invented mathematics". Although you can't deny that one reason we value those proofs so much is because we've inherited their culture. Well, at least to a point; I'm just trying to account for the fact that inevitably, one reason we consider them so important is because they're damn near a direct predecessor of our own culture and therefore we care about many of the same things and see many of the same things in the same way.

I admit I haven't done nearly as much research into this as you seem to have done, but judging by a cursory glance on the Internet, it seems that formal logic systems were also developed in Indian independently (and roughly contemporaneously, I guess) of the Greeks. It's also likely, or at least possible, that other cultures valued logic as well, but simply weren't as formal about it (our modern academic emphasis on this formality being a pretty Greek thing in itself). Yeah, I'm aware that "informal logic" sounds kind of bizarre, but I think you get my point that one factor here in the Western academic tradition valuing Greek formal systems is that the Western academic tradition is basically a successor to the Greek academic tradition. If our society had, one way or another, progressed along differently lines, with different progenitors, we'd probably be saying similar things about them.

Although the times of Thales are a bit early, by the late Greek time and especially the time of Alexander the Great, there was a pretty large amount of contact between the Mediteranean and India. Even more certain is the connection between India and the Arabic scholars, on which most of our current mathematics is based, either via preservation of the Greek texts or by their own invention. So I don't think it's possible to claim that our mathematic tradition inherents mainly from the Greeks. Though that won't keep some Helenophiles from claiming that, as you already said.

[G-Flex]

Even more certain is the connection between India and the Arabic scholars, on which most of our current mathematics is based, either via preservation of the Greek texts or by their own invention.

One thing that definitely bugs me (and Vector will probably agree with me on this? I hope?) is this notion that all the Middle Eastern scholars did was preserve Greek knowledge. This is such an ethnocentric insult to what they actually accomplished that it's pretty damn appalling, when it comes to mathematics and science.

[Virex]

Even more certain is the connection between India and the Arabic scholars, on which most of our current mathematics is based, either via preservation of the Greek texts or by their own invention.

One thing that definitely bugs me (and Vector will probably agree with me on this? I hope?) is this notion that all the Middle Eastern scholars did was preserve Greek knowledge. This is such an ethnocentric insult to what they actually accomplished that it's pretty damn appalling, when it comes to mathematics and science.

Perhaps (a translation of) Al Jabr should be mandatory reading for all that follow high school math?

[Vector]

One thing that definitely bugs me (and Vector will probably agree with me on this? I hope?) is this notion that all the Middle Eastern scholars did was preserve Greek knowledge. This is such an ethnocentric insult to what they actually accomplished that it's pretty damn appalling, when it comes to mathematics and science.

THEY SERIOUSLY SAY THAT?

RRRRRRRRRRRRR

I know it's kind of late, but Ibn Al-Haythan has some absolutely wonderful results from 995BC or so--some very nice summation equations which he used to compute the volumes of conics!  And seriously, I cannot emphasize enough the need for notation to continue in mathematics.  Just because the Greeks theoretically started proofs doesn't mean that they wrote them in a way that was anything like transparent.  Hell, they didn't even have cyphers, ie. an easy way to write numbers.  I've read translations of those old proofs, and they were very, very unclean.


As far as the "academic tradition" goes... well, of course we're a successor.  The word "academic" comes from the olive grove, Academia, in which Plato taught his followers.

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up about some of the other things.  You're right that my mental focus has been a bit Greek-centric, and I should do some reading up on the Indian number work and stuff from ancient China.

[Truean]

Speaking of transsexuals, did anyone here somehow not expect me to weigh in on this topic? Between being one myself and going to numerous support groups etc, I have heard a lot about it. Not sure how much holds water but still.....

[Caveat: Please don't be mad at me Vector, this is just my understanding of it and what I've heard from countless psych classes, support groups and therapists, including my current one.].

The human mind is the most complex thing we know of in existence. While some concepts are social, many of them are in whole or in part neurological. There may be some part of the brain that determines "maleness" or femaleness" as gender identity or perhaps it is the structure or functionality that deals in this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/16/neuroscience.psychology
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/17/science/sci-gaybrain17

Moreover and more on point, transsexualism may have a neurological basis: http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/5/2034.full

While methods of transition are far from perfect, the hope is to one day give transsexual individuals actual female organs with each and every functionality of those organs:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/03/23/print-your-own-designer-organs/

Scriver, its a disorder because it causes a noted negative impact on the quality of ones life. Which is why it is reasonable to argue that one a person has transitioned, they no longer have it.

I'm not 100% sure I agree with that. I mean, I guess it can permanently take care of the disorder to the point where it doesn't matter anymore, but that treatment has obvious lasting effects and is nowhere near perfect.

At any rate, it's definitely disordered for your brain to expect your body to have different parts than it actually does (or however you want to describe that incongruity). I would agree that a full transition would effectively "cure" it, in a way, but all we can manage at the moment is an extremely rough facsimile of that; a post-transition transsexual is nowhere near physically the same as an individual who naturally developed as that sex. Sure, the dysphoria related to it might be mostly (or completely) taken care of, but the steps taken to do that aren't without flaw. Basically, we can't turn a biological male into a biological female (or vice-versa), we can only modify their physical and hormonal makeup to the point where the end result is similar enough that there's no longer a perceived incongruity between mind and body.

Currently... see the article above. Also so what? . A.) I would be immensely happier transitioning to a woman or as close to one as I could get. B.) If you take that line, then what on earth do you do about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome means you are born with all XXY Chromosomes.
What sex is that person "biologically?" What if no one can honestly tell because there is no right answer? "Both?" Does it matter?

The "not social construct" and only transition works" deal:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The only known effective treatment is transition. Numerous ineffective treatments for Gay and Transgendered individuals included "induced amnesia," which exactly as you may have guessed, is not effective at all. http://www.exodusglobalalliance.org/commonquestionsabouthomosexualityp39.php. There have been many horrid attempts to "cure" homosexuality and transsexualism through clinically ineffective means http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/06/09/Rekers_Confronted_on_Ex-Gay_Therapy_and_Suicide/ on the theory that homosexuality/transsexualism was either a choice or a social construct. The patients have a tendency to kill themselves. http://www.beyondexgay.com/conference/whyitmatters. Fully 31% of transgendered individuals take their own lives and 50% of transgender individuals attempt suicide at least once before the age of 20. http://sprc.org/
A Google search of "transsexual suicide" turned up 4,020,000 results....

Personally,
I do not fit in as a boy without a massive effort to maintain a fraud. It's like being on stage all the time and having to act naturally, all the time. Thankfully I have some good friends who accept me as female and provide safe places for me to stop lying for some small amount of time. I just got done helping my best friend move into her new boyfriend's home as a female. I'm more than willing to help (in what limited capacity I can) her move, which surprise, all but one of her other friends didn't show up to do. Her new boyfriend seems to like me and I'm invited over for dinner soon, which I get to make with her.

This whole thing has actually lead to an interesting discussion, "If genitals and chromosomes don't make you female, what does? What factors denote you as female? Are they 'natural' or imposed by society? If imposed by society, would you just be happier in a different society that was more accepting?

I've gotten some interesting answers from women, some of which were plausible and some of which were borderline offensive.

In the end, if we don't know what makes someone female, then how can you reasonably say you "feel" like one?" What does being a woman "feel like?" I don't know that anyone can answer this question, except the only time in my life when I'm ok is when I'm allowed to be the girl I am. My friends notice the difference almost immediately.

[Vector]

Truean, I think you'll really like that book I suggested for you.  Really, really.