See, this is just annoying: Transgendered Woman Wins Sex Discrimination Case
A federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., ruled today that the Library of Congress discriminated against Diane Schroer when it offered her a job and then rescinded it after learning she was transgendered.
I’m not annoyed that Schroer won the case because I have little interest in that, and precisely zero interest in writing about it. What annoys me is how far the gender bending has gone; how few people this aggravates. Just like all that “man gives birth” nonsense earlier this year. No. That was a woman who underwent medical treatment including extensive surgery to make herself resemble a man. Schroer, no matter what he does to the outside of his body and no matter what chemicals he takes to change the inside, no matter what government documentation he has that states he is female, will always have the XY chromosomes he was born with. He was born male and remains so to this day. He wants to look like and live like a woman; fine. America is a free country, knock your lights out, Mr. Schroer. But I wish we could just stop the postmodern pretense that renaming something changes it.
Laura, I don’t know how to say this, but your pardonable and quite understandable ignorance on this issue is causing you to act uncharitably, and in a way that’s just plain wrong.
We’re all taught at school that 46xy=male, 46xx=female, right? Well, that’s not always true. Some people (Kleinfelters syndrome) have 47xxy chromosomes, and although most of them are male – and some can father children with technical help – some aren’t. Some have given birth, in the normal way. They’re women.
Miss Teen USA 1991 had 46xy chromosomes, She also has CAIS – Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which means she was born female. There’s a mirror-image condition, CAH (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) which leads to masculinisation even in those with 46xx chromosomes.
There’s hundreds of different Intersex conditions, all leading to a body neither wholly male nor wholly female.
The weirdest and most upsetting ones are those like 5ARD and 17BHDD, where the person gets a natural apparent sex change. Almost always from female to male, less than 1% go the other way.
These are not “one in a million” cases either, In aggregate, it’s 1.7% of the population. 1 person in 60. Only 1 in 1000 show such obvious symptoms that it causes problems. Most of the 1 in 60 don’t know they’re Intersexed, they just don’t seem to be able to have children.
So what has this got to do with those weird “transsexuals” like Colonel Schroer?
Here’s a few of the many medical papers on the subject that may clue you in:
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
If your German’s up to it, read fMRT zur Diagnose bei Transsexualität geprüft”, but to help, here’s a translation of part of that article.
There’s a mountain of evidence now that women like Diane Schroer really are biologically who they say they are – women born with masculine bodies. Masculine rather than male, as if the brain is feminised, other parts often are too.
It could have happened to you, Laura. You’d be the same person, same feelings, same emotions. Possibly asexual, the male hormones often neuter all sexual orientation, possibly even lesbian. But everyone would call you a boy, no matter how you felt. The body wouldn’t feel right, the body-image hardwired in your brain is for a female body, not a male one.
The discomfort is horrible. I know. I have one of the truly rare Intersex conditions where you’re born looking male, but the body normalises later. Like Diane, I know what it feels like to live with a masculinised body for decades, and I have to tell you, it’s horrible. No glass ceiling, lots of male privilege, but no pregnancy either, no babies, no girltalk. Every time you look in the mirror, you get reminded of just how awful you look. Most suicide by age 30.
Unlike Diane, my body normalised to match my mind, my brain, my thought, emotions and personality, without hormones. But otherwise we’re just the same. The same as you too, just with rather different life histories.
My own story’s described in COSMOS Science Magazine, and there’s an extensive article on the subject online full of links to and quotes from the various medical and scientific papers.
This has nothing to do with postmodernist claptrap – in fact, people like Diane are condemned by the Moonbats for “perpetuating gender stereotypes”. It has everything to do with medicine and science.
The appeals court will reverse this absurd ruling. On its face, the suit makes plain that the boss would have had no problem hiring an actual woman. Therefore, no violation of the law occurred. Liberals just love to impose their ridiculous morality on others, but the place for that kind of debate is the legislature, not the courts. The law does not agree with this ruling.
Zoe, you mistakenly equate brain abnormalities with genetic problems. In reality, pathological thought patterns shape the brain, and one of the best ways to cure many psychological ills (for example, anxiety disorders) is to correct the patient’s thoughts. That is the essence of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Finally, no reasonable person has a problem with taking an intersexed, genetically diseased child and trying to mould him into whichever gender seems the most appropriate — taking into account both his chromosomes and the physical anatomy. That isn’t transgenderism; it’s common sense. Ultimately, though, we call these individuals “man” or “woman” partly out of charity and partly because they’re doing the best they cann — because the individuals obviously don’t fit the definition of “man” or “woman” in every aspect.
But it’s absurd to argue that because some people enter the world with genetic disorders, that we should therefore encourage people with perfectly healthy bodies to mutilate themselves. We assault masculinity in almost every area of our society, and now we have idiot judges blatantly encouraging men literally to castrate themselves. It is no wonder men are so weak these days.
Drew -
Cognitive-behavioural therapy can affect neurology in the cerebrum to some extent, as can all life experiences, but not affect the structure or number of cells in the lymbic nucleus.
CBT has a poor record of curing epilepsy for example. Or schiziphrenia. Or mood disorders caused by neurotransmitter imbalance. Or lack of an osmic lobe.
The brain is not infinitely malleable. The higher order functions are – we learn, and that means changing neuronal connections. There have even been cases of gross re-wiring of the cerebrum after trauma, and recovery from persistent vegetative states lasting decades. But to re-wire the hypothalamus by psychotherapy is like trying to change the hardware on a PC by reprogramming it.
Trying to “mould an intersexed child” as you put it may be a worthy endeavour. But the evidence shows that it doesn’t work. It results in dysfunction, that’s all – like trying to reconfigure a PC with an axe. It’s like the effects of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – which can cause effects visible on fMRT imaging.
It’s not as if this is some hypothetical – the studies have been conducted, the experiments run. See Square Peg, Round Hole for example.
Many Intersexed people are not “genetically diseased” anyway. Lots of hormonal anomalies can happen in the womb. For example, 1 in 5 46xy foetusses whose mothers took the drug DES in the first trimester of pregnancy end up Transsexual, or Intersexed, or both. Compare with the 1 in 10 foetusses damaged by Thalidomide. See Prenatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol(DES) in males and gender-related disorders : results from a 5-year study.
You talk about perfectly healthy bodies. But the evidence shows that part of the body is cross-gendered, mismatched. That causes distress. That distress has proven intractable to all therapeutic measures, up to and including ECT, leucotomy, aversion therapy using nausea-inducing drugs and electric shocks to eyeballs and genitalia, psychotropic drugs including powerful hallucinogens, decades-long sessions of psychotherapy, gestalt therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, and so on. Even Exorcism and Spirit Release therapy, they got quite desperate. Long-term follow up has shown results indistinguishable from controls who had no treatment. Any improvement is lost in the noise.
Hormonal and Surgical therapy has in excess of an 80% improvement rate, 98% when performed under suitable conditions.That’s why no other treatment has been seriously proposed in the last decade, there is a mountain of evidence that other therapies don’t work, and that this one does.
I recommend you read BiGender and the Brain. Had you had any background knowledge in this area, I don’t think you would have said what you did.
It’s not a matter of politics, or morality, but reality.
On your blog you condemn doctors for trying to help intersexed babies live normal lives, yet you have no problem with mutilating a healthy person based on feelings? Ultimately, I may not always feel manly, but that does not make me a woman.
I never claimed that cognitive-behavioral disorder could cure every psychological problem. I merely said that thoughts can physically mould brains. Negative thoughts generally create abnormal brains, for example, and with many illnesses, CBT can reverse such effects. You claim that abnormal brain scans prove a genetic or prenatal predisposition for a disease, but I disagree. Many transexuals reverse their sexual orientation following non-neurological surgery. Their thoughts change, not their DNA.
Overall, I don’t think the feelings of transexual “patients” or their brain scans mean a whole alot.
Regardless, Laura was right — The plaintiff in this case is not a woman. He may have felt like one before or after surgery, but he isn’t one.
Drew;
Since you reject any scientifically tested information that does not fit your worldview frame, how about this?
My body is male, of that there is no doubt. According to my mother, she took DES while pregnant with me, thus preventing proper masculinization of my brain. I joined the Marine Corps, to try to ‘cure’ me, hoping it would ‘make a man’ out of me (many who have my condition join similar military or paramilitary organizations for the same reason, and the number of transwomen with weapons and demolitions experience is just staggering! “Gunpowder, Gelatine, Dynamite with a Laser Beam!”)
I still have my penis, though I’m now missing my Corpus Cavernosum and my testicles (they were atrophied anyway after two years on hormones.) My penis and scrotum, with most of the nerves intact, have been reconfigured, though, into a striking resemblance of a female pudenda. As far as sexual response, my reconfigured genitalia is ‘all systems go’, though of course there are no genitive functions.
I don’t mind telling you all this, in this lurid fashion, because I doubt that no matter what I try to persuade you that I am rational and normal, though under rather extraordinary circumstances, you will still insist I am ‘abnormal’, ‘pathological’, and other words with negative connotations, and the implication that Drew is at very least a real man (why else lament that “men are so weak these days”?)
Drew, I hope you are a transsexual in denial and that you find this posting very disturbing. If not, then I hope I’ve provoked a castration-anxiety reflex in you with my oblique description of the surgery.
To those readers of this who seek out reason, I hope I have illuminated some if it, albeit in an unconventional and sarcastic manner.
Yours;
Hazumu
Drew – perhaps you would care to give a good definition of “male” and “female”.
You value neither subjective reports – feelings – nor objective evidence – brain scans. What do you value as evidence? Please could you give me some URLs to scientific and medical papers on the subject, studies and so on. Facts.
What does then?
Here’s some more data -
Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids. by Berglund H, Lindström P, Dhejne-Helmy C, and Savic I. Abstract
Regarding sexual orientation of TS people, about a third have their sexual orientation change during transition. Given the extreme changes to hormone levels and neurotransmitters this is not surprising. It usually happens 6 months after removal of gonads. It may have a biochemical and/or psychological component in each case, and it’s not well understood. In non-TS people, sexual orientation is notoriously difficult to change in most people.
I haven’t had time to read the links you provided, Zoe, but I find it interesting that your supporting evidence includes feelings:
Correlation is NOT causation. I’ve read similar things “proving” homosexuality is a physical, not emotional/mental condition. Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Does the body create the feelings or do the feelings show up as physical symptoms/characteristics? A recent study showing that people observing great works of art react less to pain stimuli is just the latest study – along with my personal history including PTSD, which I won’t bore you with – which leads me to conclude that the brain is fully capable of generating observable scientific data based on feelings. The brain scan of a depressed person is different than the brain scan of a person who is not depressed, but that doesn’t prove the depression is genetic or not subject to change, nor does it show the source of the depression. A brain scan is literally a snapshot – useful for showing that something exists but not useful for showing why it exists. It will show a tumor but provide no explanation for why the cancer grew there at that particular time.
The fact that CBT is ineffective for epilepsy and other conditions doesn’t prove anything with regard to its efficacy for intersex conditions – which by your own statements, have a wide variety of causes, and it stands to reason, a wide variety of cures/treatments.
I admit freely that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by me personally; when I have more time I’ll go back and read the links you provided.
Objective measures = DNA, reproductive capacity, physical anatomy, etc.
Brain scans showing a slight brain abnormality are not “objective” proof that a “woman” is somehow trapped in a man’s body. That notion is simply absurd. The scans you mention may (or may not) be objective facts, but drawing the conclusions you do from them is quite subjective. Likewise, an abnormal brain scan does not prove that someone with depression was born that way, or that he is incurable. Ultimately, your leap is logic is showing that an abnormal brain means someone is actually a different sex.
Also, that last study you cite should have included a second control group of gay men.
Feminine men exist, but that doesn’t mean they need to be physically transformed to look more like the opposite sex. You are drawing the conclusions you want and looking for science to help support it — while ignoring the reality that science cannot truly change anyone’s sex at all. Even if a transexual claims to be happier after surgery, the reality is that society will always view him as abnormal, or perhaps even freakish. And although I’m sure it happens on occasion, it’s hard to imagine anyone knowingly choosing to date or marry such an individual. Society will always feel that way. Like you have said, some thought patterns do not change. Feeding into the delusion is therefore not doing anyone a service.
Hi Laura!
The reason I put so much emphasis on fMRI is because the patient is alive when it’s used.
The original evidence came from autopsies, as shown in the links in my first post. As far as I’m aware, there is zero evidence for “feelings” to be able to change number of neurons in basic brain structures such as the hypothalamus. PTSD as the result of environmental factors can and does result in changes visible in the cerebrum. But it has no effect on the pre-human and pre-mammalian sections of the brain, the lymbic nucleus. Sex is a very, very basic part of neuroanatomy, which has knock-on effects in higher brain functions.
It would be useful to examine fMRI scans of those “cured” of transsexuality, the way that people can be cured of chronic depression, to see what’s happening, assuming non-biological causation. Unfortunately, such people don’t exist, and it’s not been through lack of trying. Every weapon in the psychiatric arsenal has been employed at one time or another, up to and including psychosurgery. Leucotomy and Lobotomy. All that has happened is that sequelae have been induced.
Continued experimentation along those lines has been dropped, not because a biological cause has been absolutely proven, but because people die without effective treatment.
On one hand, we have conjecture, with no evidence for, and some evidence against.
On the other, competing view, we have unsatisfactory evidence for, and no evidence against. None. Zero. Zilch.
Moreover, until our understanding of neuroscience increases dramatically, it is impossible that we will ever have absolute proof. All we do have is a large and growing body of evidence from a variety of different experiments, all pointing to the same conclusion.
It’s complicated by the fact that the patient-reported feelings occur before the physical differences in the hypothalamus become apparent. The physical differences by themselves cannot be causal. But the causation of the development of the later physical differences definitely is set in vivo, before birth, else the DES data is inexplicable. Post-natal environmental factors play no part.
Drew – I think we can understand each other better if you would just give me a good definition of male and female. One that applies to everyone.
For example, it would have to account for those with 46xy chromosomes who have given birth. And those whose genitalia at birth were feminine and later changed to masculine due to 5ARD or 17BHDD.
You are allowed, however, to introduce the concept of someone neither M nor F. But even then, you must define what M and F mean, so we can differentiate those who are neither. The question then arises as to how such people should be treated, theologically, socially, medically and legally. Extermination has been a popular choice historically. They upset a lot of people, and many would prefer they didn’t exist. Many deny they can exist, and so bury the evidence – and the bodies.
But again, bottom line, in order to make the dogmatic statements you’ve made, you need to define male and female.
.
Well no, they’re men. Feminine men, but men. That has nothing to do with the question.
You misunderstand. I agree completely that our present state of knowledge does not allow us to change anyone’s gender, though it can change sex in some rare Intersex cases – fertile true hermaphrodites. Even if it was possible to change someone’s gender, I think it would be as unsound as any other psychic surgery without consent – such as removing frontal lobes to make employees more compliant and happier in their situation.
All that we can do is to align body with mind and brain. We’ve tried aligning mind with body by the usual techniques of mind-healing, and that doesn’t work. Mind and brain are inextricably aligned in this area. Aligning brain with body is beyond our knowledge.
Again it’s complicated by some rare Intersex conditions where the body changes naturally. See in particular Gender change in 46,XY persons with 5alpha-reductase-2 deficiency and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency. This can induce a new, or cure an existing, brain-body mismatch. Usually the latter, but not always.
I disagree with the title by the way – Gender doesn’t change, it and the brain morphology remains constant. Only the body changes, which can be either good or bad.
Why? Saying something doesn’t make it so. Why is it absurd? You haven’t defined your terms, what is a man, what is a woman, so apart from your bald assertion, what evidence is there? Especially given such conditions as 5ARD or 17BHDD?
Like Blacks were in the USA 150 years ago? Your statement “claims to be happier” I find breathtakingly arrogant. You appear to elevate your own feelings – for you’ve not given any evidence – above others. If you state “I am happy”, does anyone else have the right to say “No, you’re not, because I don’t think you can be, just because.”? Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
I know it’s hard, and you’re not alone in feeling that way. A large majority feel as you do, Which is why many TS women don’t reveal their medical history on a first date, and sometimes, not even after marriage. FWIW I do reveal, and explain, before a first date. I find that winnows out a lot of small-minded bigots. Also some who are quite reasonable, they just can’t get their head around it, for which I can’t blame them.
Not that I’m technically TS. My change was natural, as in 5ARD etc. But close enough. Few make the distinction. I used to look male (mostly). Now I look female (though an ultrasound or karyotype would show anomalies).
The last time I saw that argument – literally – was in a book about the misuse of psychiatry in the late and unlamented USSR. “Delusions of Democracy” it was called. Soviet Society had no room for those who would not conform to the politically correct pattern, so anyone wanting “freedom of the press” and such notions was delusional.
In fact, if you actually knew even the first thing about psychiatry, you’d know that Gender Dysphoria is not a delusion. In fact, if someone is delusional, they could not consent to treatment. There are legal issues. You may not like that, you may consider some notions to be absurd, but facts are facts, and independently verifiable.