The Transgender Con? Many “Transgender” People Regret Switch

[Totenkindly]

WOW that is crazy about the tissue and nerves and remapping! I never knew...

We are leaning about these concepts in my curriculum but I never thought to apply it to gender reassignment surgery.

Yes, if you have a competent surgeon, they preserve as many nerve pathways as possible, so everything's sensate. This wasn't nearly the case 50 years ago or in underdeveloped countries, so that had contributed to some of the outcome dissatisfaction early on.

Basically, your brain thinks a certain feeling still occurs at the "old spot" but now it's just somewhere else, so you start to recognize where the feeling actually is, physically. It's the same process as learning your body the first time, you're just more self-aware of the process since you're typically a lot older.

 

[gromit]

Yes, if you have a competent surgeon, they preserve as many nerve pathways as possible, so everything's sensate. This wasn't nearly the case 50 years ago or in underdeveloped countries, so that had contributed to some of the outcome dissatisfaction early on.

Basically, your brain thinks a certain feeling still occurs at the "old spot" but now it's just somewhere else, so you start to recognize where the feeling actually is, physically. It's the same process as learning your body the first time, you're just more self-aware of the process since you're typically a lot older.

Neuroplasticity is so mind-boggling.

We had talked about it more in the context of people who had experienced stroke. Same idea but opposite, kind of, because the sudden change occurs at the level of the brain, rather than in the body. The areas of the brain which are mapped to a particular area of the body (either in terms of sensation/input or muscle output, often both) are wiped out. I am kind of simplifying exactly how the process works, but, depending on the extent of damage, the brain will remap new neurons to send signals to those muscle cells which had previously been innervated by the damaged brain area.

The neuroplastic changes occur best when the nervous system determines a need for it, so it's based on use and demand and other factors.

 

[PocketFullOf]

lol this strikes me as some cathy brennan level shit.

 

[á´…eparted]

lol this strikes me as some cathy brennan level shit.

Nah her level of insanity is off in the stratosphere. Essentially no one can like her as she pulls radicalism from so many different areas.

 

[Thalassa]

Yes, I thought of this as well. I don't suppose someone has that statistic.



I hope you got permission first.



I'm not familiar with New American. When I read articles, I'm primarily looking for statistics, facts, and anecdotal evidence. My interest in this topic is in the success of the operation. Do people who've undergone gender reassignment surgery lead happier, more fulfilling lives?



This is great news. I assume that the change is lasting or at least lasting more than a year or two? Also, thanks for sharing.

I don't know if you have ever been close to a Trans person, or even a fully homosexual individual who seemingly always knew they were gay, but I swear it's like they are the opposite gender, something to do with hormones in the womb, or possibly something in puberty, my ESXP and I were talking about this last night, our mutual ESFJ acquaintence is seriously almost like a bitchy girl...i think personality type has something to do with that as well, but he was one of those who always knew he was gay. I only have one T friend who I have been truly close to for years, I knew her when she went along with being a he, and it's like....it was not shocking. It was like. ..it was always there.

I think some people really don't feel like the gender they were assigned, and it's biological even. I think in these cases surgery would be a satisfying thing for them, but with someone just questioning their sexuality, probably not.

 

[Thalassa]

Not to mention there are a lot of health problems associated with playing with the hormone balance in the body. Once you get it right you're okay, but it could take years and events can change that balance. Working the body against its natural inclinations puts strain all over.

It's a very, very small portion of the population... Truly, studies would have to put together data from several countries all at once to create data large enough. I would also be interested in suicide rates of non-surgery or pre-surgery transgenders... and the portion of those that committed suicide that also had depression.. Because I think depression might be a bigger contributor than the actual transgender issue itself.

And what if it isn't the surgery itself, but the societal factors around them leading to the depression. Not their own assessment of themselves, but the way they are accepted by their peer group, strangers, family and lovers. Social bullying can push an insecure person over the edge.

 

[Mane]

I can understand the skepticism of the OP, I've had it too: For most of my life what was given to me as the liberal and enlightened world view was to avoid gender biases and treat gender as just a matter of sex, and then you are told to avoid thinking of gender in terms of sex and redefine it according the sort of characteristics that seem to fit entirely in the category of gender biases.
To call this confusing is an understatement: You grow up getting told that both girls and boys can play with dolls and trucks, and then comes a girl telling you to call her a boy because she likes playing with trucks. I can't deny that part of my brain is bewildered.

To be perfectly honest, I still don't understand it, and since this is beyond the realm of my individual experience, I might never be able to get it. But I also accept that just because I can't make sense of something, doesn't mean it isn't real. The distress and emotional dissonance you hear from those who feel they have the wrong body is real, something that leads to a 40% chance of suicide attempt is real, and it's a problem. Something that can help and dramatically decrease suicide attempt rates? That's real, and it's a solution. It is unfortunate for the transgender in the article, but statistics will beat anecdotal evidence any time.

 

[Totenkindly]

lol this strikes me as some cathy brennan level shit.

Oh f*k... you had to bring Brennan into this? Lol.

Nah her level of insanity is off in the stratosphere. Essentially no one can like her as she pulls radicalism from so many different areas.

Oh, good, you covered that one.

 

[ancalagon]

I can understand the skepticism of the OP, I've had it too: For most of my life what was given to me as the liberal and enlightened world view was to avoid gender biases and treat gender as just a matter of sex, and then you are told to avoid thinking of gender in terms of sex and redefine it according the sort of characteristics that seem to fit entirely in the category of gender biases.
To call this confusing is an understatement: You grow up getting told that both girls and boys can play with dolls and trucks, and then comes a girl telling you to call her a boy because she likes playing with trucks. I can't deny that part of my brain is bewildered.

The politically correct view is that gender roles are evil. The problem isn't gender roles, though, it's forcing gender roles on people.

To be perfectly honest, I still don't understand it, and since this is beyond the realm of my individual experience, I might never be able to get it.

There are two kinds of understanding: viscerally getting it in the sense of being able to imagine yourself in their place, and intellectually understanding that it exists.

My favorite color is blue. I also like red and black, and if I didn't like blue quite as much, either red or black might be my favorite color. I get people whose favorite color is red or black, because I can see why they'd like them so much. Yellow is my least favorite color. Yellow is ugly and gross looking. I don't like it. I don't get people who, for some strange reason, like yellow. But I do understand that they have an emotional reaction to yellow that's similar to how I emotionally react to blue.

Someone in my immediate family is trans, and so I did the obvious thought-experiment: how would I react if I'd been born and raised as a girl? And basically, I wouldn't be much different, and I wouldn't be bothered by it. I'll never get trans people in a visceral, that-could-have-been-me kind of way, any more than I'll ever get people who like the color yellow. I don't think that's necessary, though. Understanding that they have the reactions that they do ought to be enough.

 

[kyuuei]

And what if it isn't the surgery itself, but the societal factors around them leading to the depression. Not their own assessment of themselves, but the way they are accepted by their peer group, strangers, family and lovers. Social bullying can push an insecure person over the edge.

Exactly what I was trying to say. I think that by the time they even get to the point of being screened enough for surgery, they've already had to battle everyone around them, and somehow survive all that constant pressure and alienation without depression creeping in. It's a hard, very real struggle. Either you don't feel right, or no one around your feels right, and they blame you for it.

 

[Mane]

Someone in my immediate family is trans, and so I did the obvious thought-experiment: how would I react if I'd been born and raised as a girl? And basically, I wouldn't be much different, and I wouldn't be bothered by it. I'll never get trans people in a visceral, that-could-have-been-me kind of way, any more than I'll ever get people who like the color yellow. I don't think that's necessary, though. Understanding that they have the reactions that they do ought to be enough.

Exactly, in which I mean the visceral exactly in that I could have said every single word of that post except for replacing family member with friends and replace the positions of blue with red. More importantly, I believe that to be willing to acknowledge the limits of your empathy is critical for the emotional development of competent sympathy.

It is when people can not acknowledge that there are some experiences and forms of suffering that do not fit within their own realm of experience, that people attempt to devalue the suffering of others in order to make it fit with whatever the closest thing they are able to recognize (Such as comparing the cognitive dissonance trans feel with their body to body image issues like weight), or worst, determine that the claim of suffering is somehow illegitimate or outright fake (Such as some of the statements made in the article).

I do think it's more comparable to empathy vs. sympathy though, since I can't really say I understand it on an intellectual level: I know and acknowledge that is there, I acknowledge the emotional pains it causes, but I don't really understand the process behind it.

I've done a rudimentary search awhile back to read about it, but the explanations provide justification rather then explanation, social justice narrative rather then insight into the psychology of the process (Maybe for some that is enough, but my brain doesn't work that way - I can't shift to understand something just because understanding it is the moral thing to do).

 

[prplchknz]

if there's so much shit that blocks people from transistion and you have to go through so many hoops and even then can still not be allowed, is it still a con?

 

[PocketFullOf]

Oh f*k... you had to bring Brennan into this? Lol.



Oh, good, you covered that one.

Yeah, it's not as overtly...crazy, but the deliberate misinformation for the purpose of delegitimizing something is pretty bad. Since they don't go as far as to purposefully misgender people or bully them I suppose you are right.

 

[Avocado]

Focusing just on this part, this ties into the stress and 'damage' that occurs from the act of the transition -- reverberations -- even if you finally feel at peace within your own body. That part (incongruence with self) has been corrected; but if family, friends, and/or your former support groups (like church) have rejected you and want nothing more to do with you, now you can experience a bunch of issues stemming around acceptance, shame, abandonment, etc., and you've lost all the people you normally leaned on to get through such experiences. this is why psych issues and suicidal tendencies can exist beyond transition, even if the process did the job it was supposed to in terms of body and identity congruence.

(I know you get that, due to your experience with JW; when someone leaves a religious group, they can feel like they did the right thing, but the resultant rejection/shaming by those who had a certain place in one's life can still be devastating, and you have to develop a new support group. This forum, for me, was my support group when I went through this experience; I don't know what I would have done without many of the people here at the time.)

 

[chubber]

Is this article trying to provoke the idea that public funds are going to be "wasted" on gender reassignment? When their idea is that the money could be better used elsewhere? I'm always pro R&D and what these statements does is their lack of understanding of how it actually creates jobs and promotes a better future for all. meh

 

[Lark]

There's a serious Catch 22 in anything like this, I dont believe it is restricted to the transgendered scene but perhaps it is a pretty good example because the changes involved are not simply beliefs, preferences for behaviour and behaviour but tangible physical changes.

The Catch is that anyone highlighting anything which threatens to undermine core tenets is going to be treated with hostility or, at best, serious skepticism.

Whether its proffering an opinion or an attempt performing much more sound research to provide proofs.

The only source which will be entertained will be one which emerges from the scene or community themselves, even then it may be dismissed as "self-hating" or marginalised as anomalous and unrepresentative. That's if it ever gets that length because there's major factors militating against it.

 

[Lark]

Is this article trying to provoke the idea that public funds are going to be "wasted" on gender reassignment? When their idea is that the money could be better used elsewhere? I'm always pro R&D and what these statements does is their lack of understanding of how it actually creates jobs and promotes a better future for all. meh

I'd like to believe that but I think its optimistic.

I was with a group of women in a club one time when one post-op and two pre-op transgendered men got into a battle with them, now the woman they principally choose to challenge was pretty hard and decked the ring leader.

So far, so meaningless anecdote which has nothing to do with anything, but that one of the pre-op transgendered men actually met up with my female friends to apologise outside the club explaining who they were and that their friend, only recently (I think with the last two to three years at the time) post-op and thought my female friends had been "looking at them funny" and said they "looked mannish". Nothing of the sort happened at all. I was with the group the whole time and we didnt notice or pay the group of transgendered people at all. In fact had the guy not come and told us what had happened we would have been none the wiser as to what it was all about.

I was a student at the time and the gender reassigned female was living a female halls of residence nearby and friends living there whom I visited regularly reported bizarre and aggressive behaviour all the time. Initially they were able to excuse it as something which was a consequence of hormonal treatments but after enough of it they just began reporting the behaviour because they thought it was more like psychological disturbance and, bizarrely, mysogyny than anything else.

Now I'd be content to describe that as an anomaly in an already small, small percentage of the population, and I dont have the statistics, it could be an exceptional case of unhappiness and issues greater than being transgendered. Although I tend to recall it, actual, concrete experience, when I encounter anyone abstractly reasoning that allocating resources to this sort of procedure is all it takes to make for happiness of all involved and indeed a sort of general ripple effect of happiness out to everyone.

 

[Totenkindly]

Since I saw it this morning and it's relevant:

A third of Fortune 500 companies now cover transgender health care - Yahoo News

A third of Fortune 500 companies now cover transgender health care

The number of Fortune 500 companies willing pay for sex reassignment surgeries and other transgender-related healthcare has gone from zero in 2002 to 169 this year, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign.

The report, which ranks corporations on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans employees, also found that more than half of corporations with more than 500 employees that participated in the survey now cover the procedures. That’s 418 firms.

Some of the biggest names in corporate America are among those who have signed up to cover the procedures, at up to $75,000 per employee. Facebook Inc., Visa, Starbucks Corp., CVS Health Corp. and Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. are just some of the firms that decided this year to begin covering the procedures for their workers for the first time.

“The jump in terms of employers adopting transgender benefits has been the most dramatic of any single aspect of the Corporate Equality Index in its entire history,” said Deena Fidas, the director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Workplace Equality Program, which has been producing the report for more than a decade.

...The vast majority of health insurance plans explicitly ban the coverage of any transition-related care, grouping those procedures with elective cosmetic surgery.

This has slowly begun to change as mainstream medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, have announced new positions in recent years stating that sex reassignment surgery is not elective for some transgender people. (The American Medical Association said in 2008 that “gender dysphoria” is a “serious medical condition” that can result in “suicidality and death” without proper treatment.)

“Transition-related care is absolutely essential to trans people who are seeking to be themselves,” said Lisa Mottet, deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “In many cases, this care is actually life-saving..."

This is actually the culmination of many years of discussions and awareness of the condition.

 

[danseen]

It depends. I think it depends on how a TS sees his or her transition. Many don't want surgery, I guess for the reasons the OP cites.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Studying. Just found out this astounding fact: 5 to 8% of FTM patients taking testosterone experience clitoral growth sufficient for penetrative vaginal intercourse. ???!!!!! Permanent change.

OH MY