I don't understand the term trans

[Dizchu]

Is there a difference between trans and "otherkin", where you hear of people on tumblr claiming to be born as an animal in a human body, or something like that? People don't usually take the latter as seriously as they do the former. Should they?

The difference between males and females is rather small (compared to the difference between humans and other animals), and the sex of a baby is determined in utero. A human has never given birth to another animal, though if otherkin-identifying people identified as apes or monkeys I'd find that more credible than the usual foxes, wolves and dragons they often identify as. This is not to rag on otherkin folks, some simply have a strong fascination with certain animals and others take it a bit too far, but as long as they don't hurt anyone they can do as they please. The problem arises when they co-opt transgender language to give themselves credibility.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

To preface: I'm neither trans nor am I in anyway a person that what does the insy bits of people, so take what I say with a prescribed amount of salt.

Effectively, someone who's transgender has a brain of one sex in the body of the other (for example a 'male' brain in a female body). From my understanding, it's caused by a mismatch of hormones in the body, specifically a mismatch of the hormones produced by the genitalia and the hormones required for the brain to function. Since the male and female brain require different hormone balances to function properly, having the wrong hormone production can lead to some pretty shitty psychological effects that makes life more than a bit crap for person in question.

 

[DEAD34345]

My understanding of it is that people actually have kind of an innate internal blueprint of how their body is "supposed" to be, and sometimes this doesn't match up with what their body physically is, which causes all kinds of issues.

This doesn't just apply to gender either, amputees seem to suffer from a similar kind of effect, you've probably heard of phantom limbs, where people can still feel limbs that are no longer there, or feel incomplete or wrong in some way without them. The opposite situation also exists, where certain people have an extremely strong feeling that a certain limb or other body part shouldn't actually be there, and a strong desire to literally remove it. If the body part is removed, the sufferers of this disorder (it's called body integrity identity disorder) apparently tend to be perfectly happy about it, and the psychological issues go away.

Point being, gender identity disorder seems to work the same way. For whatever reason someone ends up with a male internal blueprint when female, or vice versa, and the difference between the mental blueprint and the physical body causes stress to the person. The stress this causes can be reduced by bringing the body in line with the blueprint, while attempts to simply treat it through therapy and counselling alone don't seem to work.

I doubt it's possible to really understand without going through it yourself, but the idea of feeling fundamentally uncomfortable with your own body certainly sounds unpleasant to me.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

My understanding of it is that people actually have kind of an innate internal blueprint of how their body is "supposed" to be, and sometimes this doesn't match up with what their body physically is, which causes all kinds of issues.

This doesn't just apply to gender either, amputees seem to suffer from a similar kind of effect, you've probably heard of phantom limbs, where people can still feel limbs that are no longer there, or feel incomplete or wrong in some way without them. The opposite situation also exists, where certain people have an extremely strong feeling that a certain limb or other body part shouldn't actually be there, and a strong desire to literally remove it. If the body part is removed, the sufferers of this disorder (it's called body integrity identity disorder) apparently tend to be perfectly happy about it, and the psychological issues go away.

Point being, gender identity disorder seems to work the same way. For whatever reason someone ends up with a male internal blueprint when female, or vice versa, and the difference between the mental blueprint and the physical body causes stress to the person. The stress this causes can be reduced by bringing the body in line with the blueprint, while attempts to simply treat it through therapy and counselling alone don't seem to work.

I doubt it's possible to really understand without going through it yourself, but the idea of feeling fundamentally uncomfortable with your own body certainly sounds unpleasant to me.

Body dysphoria is somewhat related, but it's not nearly the same thing, especially because it doesn't directly effect behavior, or identity. Most trans folk, along with a lot of gay and lesbian folk, tend towards mannerisms, behavior, an even body language of the opposite sex, rather than their birth sex. A lot of what they're learning about gender dysphoria ties in to sexual dimorphism in the brain, paired with the data that suggests that trans folk, more often than not, have brains like the opposite sex than their own. This effects functionality in ways that losing a limb, or having an unwanted limb, do not, and gender dysphoria hampers basic functionality a lot more than virtually case of body dysphoria. Also the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Another thing I wanted to bring up is that "gender identity disorder" is an outdated term that's considered inaccurate and invalid now. Because being transgender is has been determined not to be a mental disorder, or illness by it self, though it can cause other mental disorders, like chronic depression.

 

[Terminal Blue]

For science!

Effectively, someone who's transgender has a brain of one sex in the body of the other (for example a 'male' brain in a female body). From my understanding, it's caused by a mismatch of hormones in the body, specifically a mismatch of the hormones produced by the genitalia and the hormones required for the brain to function. Since the male and female brain require different hormone balances to function properly, having the wrong hormone production can lead to some pretty shitty psychological effects that makes life more than a bit crap for person in question.

The "hormones" which allow the brain to function are called neurotransmitters, and aren't generally counted as hormones (although they're structurally very similar) because they only travel a very short distance from where they are produced to the receptor site. This is important because neurotransmitters have to convey information very fast.

The issue with your theory is that neurotransmitters are produced by neurons (the cells in your brain) which are the same whether you are male or female. While there is evidence that sex hormones influence the production of neurotransmitters, this is mostly a short term thing. If your level of sex hormones suddenly changes (i.e. if you're going through a menopause or taking hormone supplements) it can cause very extreme changes in how your brain works (and particularly your mood). Over time, however, neurons will simply adapt to the natural level of sex hormones in your body and produce the amount of neurotransmitters your brain needs to keep working.

Furthermore, neurotransmitters could not explain the cognitive effects of feeling that your brain and body don't match. If it was simply that trans people were generally depressed all the time, sure, but it wouldn't explain why gender identity was the focus since a person wouldn't be consciously aware that their issues were due to sex hormones. This also wouldn't explain why trans people tend to fare so much better emotionally when they start living as the sex they identify with. If it was simply that their hormones were out of line, then the hormone state would not have changed just because their lifestyle has and therefore we would not expect any improvement.

My understanding of it is that people actually have kind of an innate internal blueprint of how their body is "supposed" to be, and sometimes this doesn't match up with what their body physically is, which causes all kinds of issues.

The issue with the comparison to a phantom limb is that it's only found in amputees. People who are born without a particular limb don't have it.

The issue there is that the brain has essentially "learned" over its lifespan to expect certain forms of neurological feedback. As your nervous system develops, your brain adapts itself to the task of controlling and receiving information from all your limbs. It's why it's so difficult to build a prosthetic limb which a person can control with their nervous system, because the way the brain "organizes" that information is unique to the individual and learned over their life.

When the limb is suddenly lost, even if the mind consciously accepts the loss the neurology of the brain doesn't know how to respond. It's set up specifically to organize all this information which it expects to be receiving but is not getting any more.

There's a much more interesting theory which is similar to what you're suggesting called "cognitive prototyping". Basically, the theory is that human beings are intensely neurologically geared around recognizing other people, particularly their faces. It's one of the first cognitive tasks which babies are able to perform and they can do it from as little as a few hours after birth. It's possible that during that time the baby has already developed a "prototype", an understanding of what a face is meant to look like based on a synthesis of different faces it has seen, and there's some evidence to suggest that babies can already distinguish between "male" and "female" faces from only a few days after birth.

Whether this has anything to do with how a person develops personal identity though is another matter. Babies don't have any of the hallmarks of personal identity, they don't seem to recognize themselves in mirrors until quite a while after they've already learned to recognize faces, for example. It's likely that identity formation is actually a very long process and probably a very complicated one.

In short, I'd be extremely, extremely wary of concluding or even suggesting that being trans is caused by a single thing. There is no single explanation which holds up and can account for all possibilities, and much as people tend to get excited when a researcher reports some bold claim about sex differences in the brain or prenatal hormone profiles, it's worth being conservative about just how much explanatory value these theories have given quite how many different, incompatible (and in many cases, defunct) notions have been put forward as "the" cause of gender identity over the years.

 

[peruvianskys]

I think it's amazing how fast people who consider themselves progressive/feminist are accepting the notion of a "woman's brain" or "woman's soul." I thought the whole point of feminism was that there *isn't* any behavior or way of living that is just for men or just for women. But now it seems like this idea that "man" and "woman" are firm, unchanging categories that some people just magically align with has become the new orthodoxy. Very odd, and very conservative, at least in my opinion.

 

[Something Amyss]

Its tough to explain gender dysphoria because its something that, quite rightfully, 99% of the population takes for granted.

What would an Escapist thread be without a shitty car analogy? Nothing, I tell you.

Well, I suppose this isn't a car analogy so much as just a point of relation. A good chunk of people don't wear seatbelts because they can't comprehend the forces that are at work when you're driving in a car. The reality is that you're trusting your life to a multi-ton Newtonian death trap, but you don't think about it because most of the time cars just work. Or their breakdown is not in a spectacularly dangerous fashion. The maor difference is a car accident can happen to anyone in a vehicle, while this is something 99% of the population doesn't deal with. So not anyone can "crash," but the basic idea remains: people don't get it because for them, things are working fine. Hell, since this site revolves at least partially around video games, there were people who couldn't understand that the Red Ring of Death was a systemic issue with the Xbox 360 because it didn't personally happen to them.

It's this internal sense of "normalcy" that makes another's condition (not just being trans) difficult to relate.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think it's amazing how fast people who consider themselves progressive/feminist are accepting the notion of a "woman's brain" or "woman's soul." I thought the whole point of feminism was that there *isn't* any behavior or way of living that is just for men or just for women. But now it seems like this idea that "man" and "woman" are firm, unchanging categories that some people just magically align with has become the new orthodoxy. Very odd, and very conservative, at least in my opinion.

But there *isn't* any behaviour or way of living that is just for men or women, or at least, the existence of trans individuals in no way changes this. "man" and "woman" being unchanging categories (which is quote contrary to the notion you'd get from trans activists, trans people, and related medical fields) still wouldn't mean that there were behaviours that were out of bounds or ways of living that were. This seems less like a contradiction and more an attempt to force a contradiction.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The percentage of car's that fail with lethal or injurious consequences is much higher than the percentage of humans who are trans. By rights, people should expect to be injured in their car, and plan accordingly. That we so often don't probably has a lot more to do with denial of that fact and a sense of personal control ("I'm a good driver!") than just not understanding physics. Most people have been in a crash by the time they're in their 20's, so they've FELT it.

By contrast, trans people tend to be a lot less dramatic than a car wreck, and so much less frequent. The best apolitical estimate I've seen (from FiveThirtyEight) put it at around .3% of US adults, and admitted how hard it was to come to any conclusion at all. That ends up being ~700,000 people in a country with more than 330,000,000. That's about 1 in 452, which is about the same as the rate of Down's Syndrome (not drawing a qualitative comparison, to be clear), which you also don't see evidenced every day. In fact, a lot of things that we consider to be pretty uncommon in our daily lives turn out to be a lot more common than trans people.

There isn't even really the argument that gay people have used successfully, which is the "one in your family" approach. It's just not likely that most people will have someone who is trans in their family, unless they have a giant family. I think it's impressive given all of that, how much attention trans people have managed to bring to the issues they face though. A lot of much larger groups with much worse histories of treatment haven't managed so well.

I distrust statistics when it comes to trans folk, because even "apolitical" statistics have problems when it comes to openness within the trans community. So many trans folk are in the closet, who have families now and might not transition until far later in life. Then you have to take into account the trans folk who go stealth, meaning that they live as the gender they identify as, cut all ties, and staunchly refuse to admit that they're trans. A lot of trans people who are closeted, or stealth, flat refuse to even participate in totally anonymous surveys. Then there are people in any organization who will adjust confidence numbers to reflect a bias, which makes all statistics, even "apolitical" ones, somewhat unreliable.

One thing that effects this drastically is that you say other groups have histories of worse treatment than trans folk, which really isn't at all true. Trans folk for a long time were lumped in with homosexuals, leading to being institutionalized in the best circumstances. More often than not trans folk were exposed to the most horrific abuse in the names of "treatment" and "conversion", those ones were lucky too. Many more have and still are, beaten, raped, and murdered. Then you take into account that families are more likely today to disown and abandon a child who comes out as trans, than they are to do the same to a child that comes out as gay. Also there are a lot of trans women in pornography and prostitution, not by active choice either, but because it's generally otherwise impossible for a trans person to make a living. Not only is the history trans folk have just as bad as many other groups, it hasn't gotten better either. The constant threat of violence is one thing that make trans folk a lot less likely to disclose the fact that they're trans, even to medical professionals. Trans folk still get mistreated even by doctors in hospitals.

When you start to look at the facts that trans folk are generally more heavily discriminated against compared to other groups, that trans folk are more likely to be victims of violent and sexual crimes. The fact that just this last year has been one of the worst on record for victimization of the trans community. That most of the states in the USA lack laws to specifically protect trans folk, that there are no federal laws to that effect either, and that a current bill to get those protections in congress is facing major opposition. Can you really honestly state that you think the few who do come foreword are the sum total of people who are trans, that a statistic trying to gauge a community that's terrified to tell the truth is correct in it's numbers? Because as it stands trans folk historically suffer the same mistreatment as most other minorities, but unlike other minorities it hasn't gotten better, in fact it seems to be getting worse. That's not gonna instill the confidence necessary in people who are trans, to come out and participate in studies and statistical surveys.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I think you'd actually appreciate the article I got that figure from. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-dont-know-the-size-of-the-transgender-population/

It sounds to me like a particularly difficult population to study, mostly because it's a population in hiding. Still, there really is no way to turn a high water mark of .5% into something more significant than the extreme low end estimate for the incidence of something like Schizophrenia. When you look at how Schizophrenic people are treated in the United States, I would say that I'd rather be trans. Homelessness and death are pretty common, along with suicide and institutionalization, at rates even higher than trans people.

Schizophrenics don't threaten anyone's sense of masculinity, or their religious sensibilities(anymore), and we still leave them to die like dogs on the street, right in front of us. Then again, they're a lot less able to stand up and fight for themselves unaided than trans people, so you've got that going for you.

Thanks for the article, I'll give it a read.

The thing with Schizophrenics is that generally medication can allow them to function easily, without anyone around them knowing that they're schizophrenic. My mother was a schizophrenic, I know many, most of whom the general population would never peg for mentally ill. When they go untreated, of course they have a worse time of things, but that's because they're not being treated. One thing is that it's a lot easier for a schizophrenic person to get treatment, than it is for a trans person to get treatment, because all insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and other state insurances cover anti-psychotics, but not cross-gender hormone replacement therap. Just as an example.

Compound that with the fact that psychotropic medications take a much shorter time to stabilize on, a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Hormone replacement therapy takes years for it's full effects to be realized, even then a trans person often will need other surgeries to present confidently. The difference meaning that a person working to be come functional from mental illness isn't outing themselves constantly, a mentally ill person who is on the correct medications, you really can't tell. A trans person on the other hand is basically committing themselves to several years of being outed, because transition takes time, years, just to allow someone to pass.

Taking that into consideration, along with the fact that I'm trans, I'd rather be schizophrenic, because at least that can be more effectively treated. Although I know a few people who are trans and schizophrenic, that's even worse no matter how you slice it. Neither is right, but at least people suffering psychosis more or less get left alone, people go out of their way to harm and harass trans folk. That being left alone does tend to translate to people actively ignoring the mentally ill, but they're notably less likely to be out right murdered for their condition.

 

[renegade7]

I don't know. Why does anyone do anything with their body? Why do some people want longer hair or bigger muscles, why do some people want to be thinner or taller? Some people would just rather be the opposite sex.

I don't see why there needs to be a reason for it.

I think it's amazing how fast people who consider themselves progressive/feminist are accepting the notion of a "woman's brain" or "woman's soul." I thought the whole point of feminism was that there *isn't* any behavior or way of living that is just for men or just for women. But now it seems like this idea that "man" and "woman" are firm, unchanging categories that some people just magically align with has become the new orthodoxy. Very odd, and very conservative, at least in my opinion.

That comes from a misinterpreting of some neurological studies, along with some early efforts to gain legitimacy. The conservative backlash to transgender awareness typically hinges on the idea that it's a lifestyle choice and trans people are sufferers of a mental disorder, to respond to this the response has had to be that it's not a choice.

There are slight differences in the brains of men and women, but those differences are mediated by growth hormones. If you have a brain with female characteristics, then it's because you were born female to begin with.

And also, there was a study done in which female to male transgenders using hormone treatments had their brains change to become more in line with the structural patterns more common to males only after they began hormone therapy: http://www.medicaldaily.com/think-man-testosterone-treatment-allows-transgender-men-think-and-talk-man-350440

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

For science!

Effectively, someone who's transgender has a brain of one sex in the body of the other (for example a 'male' brain in a female body). From my understanding, it's caused by a mismatch of hormones in the body, specifically a mismatch of the hormones produced by the genitalia and the hormones required for the brain to function. Since the male and female brain require different hormone balances to function properly, having the wrong hormone production can lead to some pretty shitty psychological effects that makes life more than a bit crap for person in question.

The "hormones" which allow the brain to function are called neurotransmitters, and aren't generally counted as hormones (although they're structurally very similar) because they only travel a very short distance from where they are produced to the receptor site. This is important because neurotransmitters have to convey information very fast.

The issue with your theory is that neurotransmitters are produced by neurons (the cells in your brain) which are the same whether you are male or female. While there is evidence that sex hormones influence the production of neurotransmitters, this is mostly a short term thing. If your level of sex hormones suddenly changes (i.e. if you're going through a menopause or taking hormone supplements) it can cause very extreme changes in how your brain works (and particularly your mood). Over time, however, neurons will simply adapt to the natural level of sex hormones in your body and produce the amount of neurotransmitters your brain needs to keep working.

Furthermore, neurotransmitters could not explain the cognitive effects of feeling that your brain and body don't match. If it was simply that trans people were generally depressed all the time, sure, but it wouldn't explain why gender identity was the focus since a person wouldn't be consciously aware that their issues were due to sex hormones. This also wouldn't explain why trans people tend to fare so much better emotionally when they start living as the sex they identify with. If it was simply that their hormones were out of line, then the hormone state would not have changed just because their lifestyle has and therefore we would not expect any improvement.

Hmmmmmmm. You could be right. I haven't done biology since A-Level so I could very well be wrong. However, the NHS gives a similar explanation, although it's more a development-based one (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Causes.aspx). I don't think I add much more past chin-scratching since I don't really have a proper understanding of biochemistry.

 

[peruvianskys]

But there *isn't* any behaviour or way of living that is just for men or women, or at least, the existence of trans individuals in no way changes this. "man" and "woman" being unchanging categories (which is quote contrary to the notion you'd get from trans activists, trans people, and related medical fields) still wouldn't mean that there were behaviours that were out of bounds or ways of living that were. This seems less like a contradiction and more an attempt to force a contradiction.

I'm confused then, exactly what feelings a man could feel that a woman can't. If someone can be born, raised, educated, socialized, etc. as a man and yet still "be" a woman, that implies that there is a unique "womanly" essence or at the very least a unique "womanly" view of the world. I don't see what that is. Can anyone explain how gender identity can be conceptualized or understood apart from gender stereotypes?

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

But there *isn't* any behaviour or way of living that is just for men or women, or at least, the existence of trans individuals in no way changes this. "man" and "woman" being unchanging categories (which is quote contrary to the notion you'd get from trans activists, trans people, and related medical fields) still wouldn't mean that there were behaviours that were out of bounds or ways of living that were. This seems less like a contradiction and more an attempt to force a contradiction.

I'm confused then, exactly what feelings a man could feel that a woman can't. If someone can be born, raised, educated, socialized, etc. as a man and yet still "be" a woman, that implies that there is a unique "womanly" essence or at the very least a unique "womanly" view of the world. I don't see what that is. Can anyone explain how gender identity can be conceptualized or understood apart from gender stereotypes?

Most. Subjective. Thing. EVER.

I am reminded of feminists arguing with other women about some women just.... wanting to be housewives and mothers. To some feminists this is an offensive affront to everything they stand for, and they perceive it as rejection from those they are trying to help. To other feminists they view this as women simply choosing the lifestyle and values they prefer, and that would be an expression of their rights as a human being.

Super subjective, and basically anyone arguing with anyone else about it.... is kinda fascist, at least that's the feeling i get from it.

Ask ten different people what it means to be "woman" or "man" and you are going to get 10 different answers, especially if you ask 10 people from different places in the world.

 

[Dizchu]

I think it's amazing how fast people who consider themselves progressive/feminist are accepting the notion of a "woman's brain" or "woman's soul." I thought the whole point of feminism was that there *isn't* any behavior or way of living that is just for men or just for women. But now it seems like this idea that "man" and "woman" are firm, unchanging categories that some people just magically align with has become the new orthodoxy. Very odd, and very conservative, at least in my opinion.

What does feminism have to do with it? There's a large chunk of feminists who are as dogmatically opposed to transgender people as Christian fundamentalists are. Personally I find when feminism gets involved with trans issues things can get really ugly really quickly.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Your mother was a very fortunate woman, to respond so well to medication for so long. That isn't the case for most people, and even when they do manage to adhere to their medication schedules, the devastating long term effects of neuroleptics is there anyway. I wish I could share your general optimism surrounding Schizophrenia, but in fact your mother sounds like she was part of that lucky group which does not experience much psychosis.

Sounds like, first of all my mom had 3 psychotic episodes and she didn't return to "normal" after her first psychotic episode. She had multiple suicide attempts in her life. What she did have, what made her lucky, was having a supportive network of friends, family, and professionals to help her, along with a level of personal strength I really envy. Still her death could be considered suicide, as it was caused by her refusal to seek help when she came down with a particularly nasty strain pneumonia and a refusal to take blood sugar control medications after being diagnosed as type 2 diabetic.

I know the outcomes aren't great even in the short term, but that's really not unexpected with people who have psychotic episodes and end up with chronic mental illness. Partly that's because of the absolutely abysmal treatment they receive basically anywhere in the world, no nations mental health care system is particularly nice. Taking all of that account most of 10-15% dead due to suicide in a 10-30 year period is far better than suicide rates in the trans community.

At any rate you're kinda comparing apples to oranges and playing the oppression olympics here, because psychosis and transgenderism aren't mutually exclusive things. A shockingly high number of trans folk are driven to psychotic episodes through chronic mistreatment and inability to transition. A general statistical rate of attempted suicides for trans folk is 41%, but that's overall. For trans women it's 42% and for trans men it's 46% with crossdressers assigned male at birth being counted at a rate of 21%, which does skew the full statistic if they're counted.

An important factor is that people suffering mental illness are more likely than not to have support from friends and family, along with access to medical, fairly easy access. Trans folk by comparison are far more likely to experience homelessness, especially in their youth, and trans folk are generally not accepted into homeless shelters. Trans folk are extremely likely to be flat denied necessary medical care by doctors and health care providers, along with that the vast majority of trans folk are abandoned by their friends and family. You wanna talk grim, trans folk are likely to be alone, with no access to care, no support from friends and family, no resources, impoverished if not homeless, and lacking access to the tools to improve their lives.

The fact that most of it is because of transphobia and bigotry makes it even worse, because these are all things that can easily be fixed in society. The fact is transphobia and anti-trans bigotry is systemic, endemic in all levels of society, and worst of all not just socially acceptable, but encouraged. When you look at it that way it paints an even more grim picture. The mentally ill might get overlooked, but trans folk are targeted specifically for being trans, a lot of trans folk also suffer mental illness, and being targeted prevents them from getting help. The fact is that "it's because of transphobia and bigotry" makes it worse, not better, and because it's considered okay to victimize trans folk by society, makes it worse, far worse, than just being overlooked.