I wasn’t saying that gender dysphoria is the same as transsexualism, just that it’s used interchangeably. I’ve also been irresponsible in this thread in attempts to avoid using certain terminology and using other terminology that I would prefer to avoid, and sorry for that.

Stassa, I agree - the entire concept of gender dysphoria comes from psychiatrists defining for trans people that we have to hate our bodies and hate sex with our bodies and hate our lives prior to transition.

Sounds right to me. :)

As does the two “engines” analogy.

The problem with that is that I haven’t seen it happenning myself, so it’s just theoretical at this point. But I’ve come to believe that this fundamental theorem of transsexuality, that a woman would feel trapped inside a man’s body, is Utter Bullshit™ and we have to reverse engineer it to its basically sexist and ignorant source, if we’re gonna make any progress with knowing where we come from.

Anyway, I don’t understand gender dysphoria very well, truth be told. I never had it- and this isn’t me bragging about how unsur-passable I am, I didn’t even feel dysphoric when I looked like an Albanian mobster. Which of course is why I’m saying you don’t have to be gender dysphoric to be transsexual.

Ahem. On the other hand, I’m talking bullshit again. There was a period in my life when I was intensely dysphoric, but it was all too confusing and I don’t think I’ve made sense of it yet. Meh. It’s complicated. Never mind. I haven’t got a clue, yet…

The mtfs claiming to be intersex on the other hand- their numbers are legion, like. Besides, I for once am not at all convinced that a female gender identity in a male body necessarily results in gender dysphoria; it’s too common sense for it to make any sense to me any more. Like, sure, if you are a woman in a man’s body, you gotta be freaked out of your mind, ’cause, like, duh, eh? .

Yes, I referred to that as coopting; I’m not defending it.

Also, on the other thing, if we’re talking about people who fit into the transsexual mold - body doesn’t match what the brain expects - it’s pretty straightforward. If someone’s fine with a mismatch because it’s not all that strong or whatever, then my comments probably aren’t in reference to them. I can’t account for everyone every time I say something - I try to account for as many as possible without generalizing too much.

Also, it sounds like you’re saying gender dysphoria is a reaction to being transsexual when it’s another way to describe someone who is transsexual. Probably a poor way, but I was tired and perhaps used infelicitous language.

This bit in particular:

Here’s the thing — most infants who were operated on for being IS were assigned female. But most people trying to claim intersex as a legitimizer for their transition were assigned male. Huge statistical mismatch.

I’m so gonna steal that off you, lady (whoever you are.) ‘Cause it’s what I wanted to say but didn’t know I did.

Lisa, yeah, you’re right, I’m making it sound as if there are medical impossibilities, rigid rules of who is intersex and who isn’t, or, more to the point, what your body can be like and what it can’t. And there’s no such rule. So, sure, there have to be some people with mild PAIS who identify as mtf transsexuals going around. But it seems to me we ‘re talking about a tiny number here. They have to both have the mild-er forms of PAIS, and a female gender identity and be gender dysphoric, all in one. The mtfs claiming to be intersex on the other hand- their numbers are legion, like. Besides, I for once am not at all convinced that a female gender identity in a male body necessarily results in gender dysphoria; it’s too common sense for it to make any sense to me any more. Like, sure, if you are a woman in a man’s body, you gotta be freaked out of your mind, ’cause, like, duh, eh? .

In short:

The fundamental difference between transsexuals and intersex is that, in the case of transsexuals, we’re not happy with the sex we’re born with; in the case of the intersex, “society” is not happy with the sex they are born with.

Quoting myself from nowhere; sure sign of schizoidism, that.

Anyway, the intersex themselves make a huge point about having pretty standard gender identities and very little to do with gender dysphoria. And they’re pretty vocal about the way everyone’s treating them like confused freaks of nature. Which is not at all helped by transsexuals going “I’m gender dysphoric because I was born intersex, how would that make you feel if you were born in the wrong body?” But, yeah, once more, what Holly said.

Elizabeth, Lisa put a few things into perspective regarding your and my comments, but I’m still having trouble answering your points, because you’re totally confused about what I’m saying- and you’ve no excuse to do that, ’cause Lisa and just about everybody else seem to be reading them right.

For example, you think that I quoted the court of human rights to show how society thinks we’re freaks and should burn in hell- the point was exactly the opposite. No, the opinion of that judge wasn’t “quite mild”, neither was it “actually defending, in [a] twisty way” transsexual rights. It went out of its way to make it absolutely perfecty clear that transpeople are entitled to a full set of human rights, with no strings attached and no matter whether transsexuality is a medical condition or not. The quote is a from a decision in favour of two transsexuals claiming breach of their human rights. The court said “yeah, you’re being discriminated upon allright and it fucking sucks arse and we’re not standing for it anymore, ’cause we’re not a society of damn bastards, neither one of scientifically-tuned robots.”

As about the studies I link to, yeah, exactly, what I said was they prove nothing definitively. The same goes for the rat and bird and rabbit studies- no proof that any of that is actually what goes on in the human, especially as we have a much more complex brain (or at least some of us do.) So, yeah, no excuses for being a tranny and liking frilly dresses in there. What’s your point, then? You’re the one who said it’s all a medical condition, that causes a high suicide rate among transsexuals. In fact, that’s even weirder if you’re not transsexual as I thought you said you were- who told you we all kill ourselves and why do you need to know that that is true before you accept any of us? Like, if we’re happy being who we are, and since there’s no definitive proof that something’s wrong with our brains- then what? Do you think we deserve to be treated as second class people? ‘Cause that’s the problem with the medical causes of transsexuality: if it’s proven, it’s supposed to shut up the bigots once and for all, but, if it’s not, then we’re all a bunch of perverts and need burning. Well, that’s a fucking stupid case of carrot if you conform, stick if you can think for yourself, so bugger that for a game of soldiers, I ain’t playing and nobody else should.

But, I’m willing to cut you some slack if you’re not a transsexual. I know it may be very hard to make sense of what’s going on in our minds, or to find a definition of transsexuality that won’t offend anyone, especially by looking around the tg-net, where everybody has an opinion (and some people have more than one arsehole.) So, yeah, sorry for yelling at you, I didn’t realise. I don’t think you’re supposed to know or understand anything. On the other hand, don’t pretend you do, please. ‘Cause that is well annoying.

Shiva, you’ve gone silent, but, one last thing, kid. Yeah, your friend may have PAIS. In which case, she’s still wrong about it being the main cause of “primariness”. Chances are, she doesn’t have PAIS though. In which case, she sucks. That’s what I’m saying.

And I have to be at school in half an hour. Math lecture. Pray for my soul (and excuse the hastiness of my comment.)

And the ISNA is quite clear about infant genital surgery: everyone who has had it knows, or finds out some time during adolescence or early adulthood. Some people’s families keep it more under wraps, and you do hear stories about adult women finding out that they were diagnosed as intersex at birth — there’s an interview with a woman like that in one of ISNA’s educational films, and some of the personal stories of leaders of IS organizations touch on this as well, having to go back and piece together a patchwork of medical records to find out what was done to them. In all cases, there’s solid evidence of infant diagnoses for people who had medical interventions at birth, and there’s other kinds of tangible bodily evidence for folks who have variations of the reproductive system.

Even if there are other people who fall into a grey area sometimes called “hormonally intersexed,” where there’s not necessarily any tangible evidence (the ISNA I think has statistics on their site about the number of people who might be walking around with Klinefelter’s without even knowing it) I think it’s extremely important to let people who have the experience of being nonconsensually operated on as infants organize around that issue, name themselves, and then not have other people gatecrashing in as some kind of attempt to gain legitimacy with a “more real” diagnosis of some sort. It’s totally offensive, appropriative and takes attention away from the real issue.

So I generally agree with what Stassa said on this thread. At the same time, I don’t think these categories are totally cut and dry, certainly not categories like “homosexual” and “intersex” that the AISSG website makes sound like are exclusive! There are lots of IS people who also identify as homosexual, and there are in fact trans IS people too. Here’s the thing — most infants who were operated on for being IS were assigned female. But most people trying to claim intersex as a legitimizer for their transition were assigned male. Huge statistical mismatch. On the other hand, there are definitely quite a few IS people who were forcibly assigned female who were raised as girls and then later decided to transition to being male. Many of them identify both as trans and intersex, even though the “official diagnosis” in the DSM makes these categories exclusive. Raven Kaldera, a fairly well known author on queer subjects, is one example.

In any case, it never really works to pretend that people can be fit neatly into little boxes with nobody who overlaps and no grey areas in between. However, when it comes to an incredibly problematic practice like infant genital surgery, we can be a little more clear: some people have had it, some people haven’t, and those affected need to be able to lead the work and speak clearly for themselves.

Shiva’s talking about his friend and Elizabeth’s talking about generalities. They’re not supporting people like Sue and Diane who retroactively declared themselves intersex to legitimize themselves (and label others as illegitimate), or trans women who think that describing themselves as having vaginal agenesis makes sense.

I think Shiva did dispute the idea that someone who identifies as trans cannot have any degree of intersex, and I do believe that this is correct - that having a trans identity does not itself exclude the possibility of also being intersex, or vice versa. But that’s no reason to claim biological impossibilities as fact. I don’t agree with the statement that a large number of “primary transsexuals” are in fact intersex, but I also don’t believe that primary/secondary is at all a useful distinction, whether you define it as precisely when someone transitions or when someone becomes aware of their gender identity.

The definition of intersex is a bit more tangled - Elizabeth’s coming at it from the medical point of view, and ISNA (and you) are from the social point of view - not unlike disability as social vs. medical. Elizabeth’s example of a particular intersex-like disorder that doesn’t actually affect genital development doesn’t really fall into the definition of intersex as given by ISNA simply because no one who has that is likely to be declared a medical emergency at birth and surgically altered, and that’s where the violence done to intersex people happens. “Social” might sound softer, but what I mean is that society does not want to accommodate people with ambiguous genitalia - rather, it forces them to conform.

However, anyone who’s insensitive enough to dismiss the wish of a large number of people to be left on their own to identify the way they please and supports a group that is constantly disregarding the same people’s sensitivities and tries to barg in on their territory, with completely outlandish claims (like “I have a womb from PAIS” and “I have vaginal agenesis ’cause I’m trans”) is very much the enemy, in my book.

Anway, more later.

I also do think you are being unnecessarily harsh on Elizabeth (who, while not trans, is sympathetic and well-informed on a lot of trans issues - not perfectly, but better than many) and Shiva (who, right or wrong, spoke up on behalf of his friend). They’re not here as enemies.

Oh, and Cathryn got personal with you? Not surprised. I just figure anything she says is self-serving and narrow in scope. It makes it difficult to take anything she says or writes seriously when I can see her manipulating the whole “HBS/Transgender” argument to suit/favor her, see her buy into transphobic RadFem party line about how ENDA would sabotage Title VII, see her go on a tangent about how penises in women’s showers is a real threat because trans women are exposing themselves left and right, and that is based on a debunked story spread to discredit trans women in the first place.