Thank you for this article,the political correct establishment has lied,manipulated and twisted the facts and science to promote this dangerous idea.."the mistaken body argument”.This article only sheds light through all the rhetoric promoted by men and women who should know better. I left transexuality some years ago the process took a huge toll on me. I can only say is thank you for exposing the lies.

http://www.realityresources.com/

http://www.help4families.com/

http://www.raf-t.org/

http://groups.myspace.com/extransexaul

Your research and assumptions appear biased.

First, I’d like to say: I was born a boy, and later in my life developed the urge to become female. Yes, I had an intense dislike of my body, but I also truly emphasized more with women than any boy I’d ever met or even heard of.

But I’d like to get one thing straight. I am not “confused”, as you repeat over and over. I am SURE that I want to be female. There is no ‘maybe’, or ‘almost’ about my desire to be the opposite sex. It’s there, and it’s total. I don’t have “gender identity problems”, because I KNOW which gender I am supposed to be. There is no problem, and I know my identity: female.

I’ve had no surgery as of yet, or even hormone therapy; I need a psychologist’s recommendation to receive both, and am currently in the process of finding one. But I’d like to shatter most of your preconceived notions by informing you that I am still attracted to females. Though I haven’t heard of others who would willingly become homosexual, I can assure you that that is what I’m aiming for. In that way, the commonly used explanation that I’m only doing this to “fit in” is thrown right out the window: I have no reason to bring adversity and repression against myself except for the belief that my physical appearance must reflect my self-image.

To your credit, you do expose that changing gender is technically impossible; that my Y chromosome will be forever with me, however much I despise it.

But it is unfortunate that you can’t empathize with those who wish to change their gender, even going so far as to suggest modern medicine should abandon the practice entirely.

The matter remains that this desire to change gender hurts nobody, and brings peace of mind and happiness to thousands of people. If you insist on believing that it’s just and correct to abolish a practice that harms no-one and brings happiness to many, please keep you beliefs to yourself. But if you want to help people, try to emphasize.

Abolishing these abominations is what’s needed to be done.  Hormones incr. risk of cancers, strokes, heart attacks & no Dr. should be allowed to do this. Sex change surgeries are maimings. Dr. Fitzgibbons is right about the harms of sex change maimings. 

Transexuals have higher incidence of depression & suicides.  The problem is in the mind.

Ah, it’s so nice to hear humans calling other humans “abominations”. Well, regardless of your obvious hostility towards transsexuals, I ask you this: is it maiming to make one human being look like another? Should handicapped individuals be denied prosthetic limbs because they were born the way they were, and are therefore supposed to be that way?
Though admittedly, prosthetic limbs don’t toy with hormones, which need to be kept at a delicate balance. It’s just the principle of the idea.

Oh, and on your accusations that hormones cause cancer, strokes, heart attacks etc, and that transsexuals have a higher incidence of depression and suicides… Weird, I don’t see you citing any sources of viable research, so… you have what we call an ‘opinion’. And opinions are no basis to be making decisions upon the lives of others.

Anonymous, your comment are predictable rubbish.  Sex change maimings are synonymous to surgeons amputating the healthy limbs of those who have apotemnophilia. There have been cases where surgeons have maimed patients with healthy limbs because the patients believed that they were born with no limbs.

Cure GID, don’t maim the patient.  The harms of hormones are well known.  Inject the body over a lifetime with hormones & you do get heart attacks, strokes & even certain cancers. Sex change maimings are an abomination just as surgeons amputating the healthy limbs of a patient who demands it is an abomination. Cure the mind, do not maim the genitals.

“Your comment are predictable rubbish”? Cute. I wonder how many college classes you’ve taken dealing with logic and reasoning in literature? Well, let’s take your argument apart piece by irritating piece…

apotemnophilia. well, I don’t believe I argued for the case of nutjobs who derive sexual pleasure from amputating their limbs, did I?
Why, in fact, the only similarities apotemnophilia shares with sex-change operations is the apparent “maiming”. Well, maybe you missed this:

A sex-change operation is the process to turn one’s sexual organ into something aesthetically resembling the opposite gender’s sexual organ. Combined with hormonal therapy, this allows the individual to become aesthetically similar to the opposite gender, thereby relieving mental anxiety stemming from extreme discomfort in one’s current body.

Amputation turn one limb (arm, leg, finger, etc.) into something not recognizable as any other natural body part; a stump.

And the second half of your argument: “Inject the body with hormones”? It isn’t a shot; there’s complicated dosages and rations and whatnot involved, that I won’t pretend to understand. Your remark is akin to me remarking that inserting metal rods into a human body is bad for it: well, under irresponsible direction, it is, but under the belt of medicine it allows those hurt in accidents to regain control of their lives.

And again with this GID. Gender Identity Disorder. I’ll repeat myself; there is no disorder about my genger identity. I *know* I wan’t to be female; no maybe about it.

In conclusion… I agree with you on the point that doctors disfiguring patients who demand is unethical, and should cease immediately if it isn’t already illegal.
But you are gravely mistaken if you think that sex-change operations fall under that category.

P.S.: Get a thesaurus. I don’t want to count how many times you’ve used the words “maim” and “abomination”.
And your name is a mouthful.

Have a nice day^-^

Anonymous:

You haven’t said anything that I haven’t heard before.  I don’t care if a man believes he was born in a woman’s body, just as I don’t care if a Black person believes he or she was born white instead of Black.  I’m against sex change maimings for the same reason that I’m against a Dr. whitening the skin of some1 who suffers from Racial Identity Disorder.  A girl can not become a boy, a boy can not become a girl & a black person can not become white.

Sex change maimings are the same thing as apotemnophilia & Racial Identity Disorder, even if you say otherwise.  Scientists must cure Gender Identity Disorder & Racial Identity Disorder.  They must not offer maimings, even if the patients demand it.

The article was interesting, but it was clear that the ideas were driven from a preconceived notion of what is “right” versus “wrong,” and there are religious motivations involved.

I find it so interesting that two groups of people can look at the notion that natal brain wiring supports THEIR point of view.

This article claims, “Before birth prenatal hormones shape the brains of boys to be different from those of girls. Mutilating surgery and hormone treatments can create the appearance of a male or female body, but it cannot change the underlying reality. It is not possible to change a person’s sex.”

Meanwhile, those who see GID as viable/real instead believe that the brain has been impacted prenatally so as to be wired more like the opposite physical sex, so biologically the body can be justifiably altered to conform to the unchangeable brain identity.

See? Different assumptions lead to different conclusions. It would be nice to see someone actually discuss both sides, not just focus on the self-justifying ones.

(For myself, I’m preop M2F.)

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi in an article raised the topic of Racial Identity Disorder & that just as it’s bad for a Dr. to Whiten a Black man or woman’s skin because they think they were born White, it’s just as bad for a Dr. to make a girl a boy or a boy a girl because they believe they were born the opposite sex. 

It used to be that if some1 suffered from GID, Drs. would spend time trying to cure the person or better treat the GID.  Yet ever since sex change maimings came out, most psychologists are not treating GID.  Rather what they’re doing is 1st diagnosing whether a person suffers from GID & then if that is determined, they surgically maim the patient. Transexuals are even pushing to remove GID from the DSM.  If this happens, then they’ll next demand that reparative therapists who treat GID be banned.  This sad & it’s even sadder that so many in the medical & psychological communities are participating in these maimings.  Make it illegal to perform sex changes.

In my analysis of the comments by “abolishsex.....”, I can easily see that his Father has influenced his belief system to damaging proportions. This person has a lower than average IQ as is evident in his repetitions. Anonymous, you did right in meting out each comment, making it at least more possible for Binky to understand.

He believes everything he reads. I would recommend using a Library, not a Porn shop or a grocery store when seeking knowledge. There is a difference between books that offer you information to help you make decisions and loose leaf publications that help you thru the night.... and you can order Xray glasses from them too!

Anonymous, thank you for your willingness to stick to your guns. These wooly mammoths will die off, on their own, as will their archaic beliefs.

Jennifer, I appreciate your point of view as well.You also come from and speak from experience. I find it amazing that a doctor can spend most or all of his / her career and still get it wrong. But it seems that there is an “old boys’ club” with desires to manipulate the lives of children and adolescents, forcing them to live in their birth sex, regardless of the complications.

Most recent theories are that what has been discussed here is merely on the spectrum of sex and sexuality between male and female, ie hermaphroditism. When 1 in 100 infants present at birth, with genital ambiguities, why should it be such a distant consideration that people can try to live in their birth sex for decades, only to seek resolution as an adult?

Dr. Fitz..., you have had it wrong all of your life. Sad, very sad. Your theories would be a lot more plausible if you had kept up with research over the last thirty years, as I have.

Mercatornet, I am further saddened that a publication such as yours would offer an incredibly biased supposed professional any space at all, unless it is in your dark mission to support such dribble.

Michelle Hogan
Torchlight Gender Support

Though new in ethical debates between transsexuals and the good intentioned i feel that the transsexual side is arguing from subjective experience while the other is arguing from biological determinism. Whats the confusion between sex and gender? Can a man be anything but a man while he desires to be effeminate? Any disorder or natural occurrence can be explained in terms of 1 out of 100 which doesnt justify or dismiss surgery! I would love to see the physical cause and justification for attempts at castration in order to feel better about ones body. Free will is not absolute no matter how much i want to fly it will not happen, but is getting in an airplane the same thing? No One can choose a lifestyle but should science help if further (if wrong) damage can be done? Why not wait until gender is more than argued choice but a provable biological reality to legalize such an irreversible procedure? No one can say Gender identity crisis (ie when you dont want what you got) is normal average of society let alone nature. If there’s a slight possibility that a person is suffering from a psychological illness surgery should be avoided until tests can be developed to determine mentally ill from true gender conflicts. No one denys how hard it might be for people who might legitimately suffer everyday with genitals they want removed, but there is a difference between removing an appendicitis and genitals, it’s called cure. One does not give a narcissist a mirror just so his quality of life improves. I argue that transgender surgery should not attempt to mimic the opposite sex but be developed completely before it becomes a viable and legally sanctioned option. One might say that this will never happen, but...why? maybe it is because science has to develop, maybe because one does not choose identity. Today i rank among the good intentioned. I seek facts and logical arguments not opinions based on interpreted documents.
-Humble

It’s typical for apologists of sex change maimings such as Michelle Hogan to engage in personal attacks, saying that I have a low IQ.  It’s also easy for Michelle to become arrogant & attack Dr. Fitzgibbons who believes that the right approach to Gender Dysphoria is to treat GID & cure the mind, not maim the genitals. 

While I’m not a repair therapist, the truth is that repair therapists are attacked because politics dominates the discussion.  Apologists for sex change maimings don’t want a cure for GID.  They also don’t want a cure for homosexuality.  They’re against repair therapy no matter what the success is & efficacy is a sideissue.

You always fail to mention those who are not XX, or XY. What about those with AIS who are assigned female at birth, but are XY? Should they have the right to choose to live as men since they are XY, even if they lack male gentiles and have breasts? What about those who are XX males, should they have the right to live as females? Be real, people with intersexed conditions far outnumber transsexuals, yet they are always overlooked. This is because we remind you that not is all simple!

I think that you are way out of line and have no knowledge to what you are talking about. Why say that about people you don’t even know.

Colby, I make my comments based on forensic and profiling principles. My comments above are based on textual and grammatical observations.

I stand by my comments and I put my name on them. I do not hide behind pseudonyms and fake names. This is my life and I lead it completely, COMPLETELY, in truth.

Now, you who call yourself abolishblahblahblah....

My comments toward Fitzgibbons are based on current research. His are based on opinion, not fact and not used by any respected authority today.

MVC (Humble) will keep us untreated due to a perception by one person that there is no proper treatment. Standards of Care have been maintained by gender specialists for years. Have you done your research? I do not see it in your comments. The facts are that 98% of surgeries have been successful, over decades. You are concerned that a mistake may be made. You are right, mistakes are made, because doctors are human. Indeed, some also have ulterior motives, to support their political and/or religious beliefs and imposing them on patients.

This issue has been discovered in CAMH in Toronto. Psychologists running the Gender Clinic there have been found to be supporting archaic treatments for adults and children while receiving funding from religious right groups that are not even in this country. This movement has effected many children in this country, isolating them from the true and proper treatment that they deserve. To me, this is criminal. In fact, one person, who calls himself a psychologist, is not recognized as such in our province or our country by any psychology or psychiatric governing body. And he is not alone. How deep does the con go?

All of you who comment, are you gender dysphoric? Does this issue have a direct effect on you? Colour your comments appropriately or let the real professionals handle the issue. I work with them daily.

Michelle Hogan
Torchlight Gender Support