halotosis: http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/02/mind-reading-neuroscientist-v-s - ramachandran-on-unlearning-pain/

Huh. First I've read of this, but I've got to say, I'm genuinely intrigued. Never heard the phenomenon explained in such detail. In fact, this may just be one of the best incidental links I've followed on Fark in a loooooong time.

That said, I think the real issue here is that people don't demarcate these phenomena- largely because there's preconceptions (political, religious, or just plain ignorant) getting in the way of thinking about the matter more... empirically.

The desire to make this some right-wing or left-wing talking point tends to take precedence over, yanno, trying to understand it. But then it's been my observation that a good number of people have a dangerously low sense of curiosity when it comes to these things, and life in general, for that matter.

Exception Collection: bhcompy: Purely an ontological question, and definitely leaning more towards the mental side. What you're saying would work with something like arthritis, where your body isn't working in the way that it was physically designed and able to because of physical ailment, but this is entirely different. If your BIOS is corrupt and your computer won't power on there isn't a physical issue with the hardware, there is a "mental" issue with the underlying programming; the hardware is still capable of working as designed.

Except that in my case my BIOS isn't corrupt, it's that I'm running an OS that isn't compatible with the hardware. Since they can't just nuke & pave the brain with the "correct" OS, they must change the body. This leaves aside the argument that my physical brain is different - it's physically closer to a woman's than a man's.

/The computer analogy sucks.

Shrug. The brain is constantly developing new neural pathways and changes significantly over time and is also influenced by various chemicals that your body produces(or you ingest).

stryker4526: Exception Collection: bhcompy: Purely an ontological question, and definitely leaning more towards the mental side. What you're saying would work with something like arthritis, where your body isn't working in the way that it was physically designed and able to because of physical ailment, but this is entirely different. If your BIOS is corrupt and your computer won't power on there isn't a physical issue with the hardware, there is a "mental" issue with the underlying programming; the hardware is still capable of working as designed.

Except that in my case my BIOS isn't corrupt, it's that I'm running an OS that isn't compatible with the hardware. Since they can't just nuke & pave the brain with the "correct" OS, they must change the body. This leaves aside the argument that my physical brain is different - it's physically closer to a woman's than a man's.

/The computer analogy sucks.

Yeah it really does in this case. You can't just "wipe" the brain and install the "correct OS" or what have you. And especially in the case of something like GID that specific analogy falls flat since it kind of IS a hardware issue... as you said the brain of a GID person is a lot better of a match to a female brain physically than a male one.

You can't wipe the brain, but the brain also isn't a constant. It is dynamic.

bhcompy: stryker4526: Exception Collection: bhcompy: Purely an ontological question, and definitely leaning more towards the mental side. What you're saying would work with something like arthritis, where your body isn't working in the way that it was physically designed and able to because of physical ailment, but this is entirely different. If your BIOS is corrupt and your computer won't power on there isn't a physical issue with the hardware, there is a "mental" issue with the underlying programming; the hardware is still capable of working as designed.

Except that in my case my BIOS isn't corrupt, it's that I'm running an OS that isn't compatible with the hardware. Since they can't just nuke & pave the brain with the "correct" OS, they must change the body. This leaves aside the argument that my physical brain is different - it's physically closer to a woman's than a man's.

/The computer analogy sucks.

Yeah it really does in this case. You can't just "wipe" the brain and install the "correct OS" or what have you. And especially in the case of something like GID that specific analogy falls flat since it kind of IS a hardware issue... as you said the brain of a GID person is a lot better of a match to a female brain physically than a male one.

You can't wipe the brain, but the brain also isn't a constant. It is dynamic.

Uh... so? There are fundamental physical differences between male and female brains that have nothing to do with neurons and the like.

Back to the topic at hand, I don't think it's even possible for a 4 year old to have these kinds of ideas without a huge, huge misstep on the parents behalf.

1. 4 year olds have pretty much no intellectual sexual identity
2. 4 year olds shouldn't be particularly familiar with the differences between male and female anatomy, much less having any concept of the significance of those physical differences.
3. As per above point, a 4 year old should not have the capacity to see his penis as a threat to his sexual identity, since at that age a penis is simply what you pee out of. For a child of that age, it would be like deciding you hate your anus, or your nostrils. It's purely functional. This has been fed into him by an adult. And since the story has made it's way into the news, I'd be inclined to look towards the parents.

Blushing Wall Flower: Egoy3k: Why would a 4 year old have enough knowledge of physiology to know penis = boy and attempt to cut it off?

I have 6 nephews. Every single one knew that penis = boy by the time he was four. All of them were...not exactly disgusted...but were turned off by girly things. And they did not think it was funny if I gave them girly things as gifts. They were pissed. ...which is why I gave them girly things as gifts (I'm an evil hilarious aunt)

There ya go.

glassbottomboatcaptain: 1. 4 year olds have pretty much no intellectual sexual identity
2. 4 year olds shouldn't be particularly familiar with the differences between male and female anatomy, much less having any concept of the significance of those physical differences.
3. As per above point, a 4 year old should not have the capacity to see his penis as a threat to his sexual identity, since at that age a penis is simply what you pee out of. For a child of that age, it would be like deciding you hate your anus, or your nostrils. It's purely functional. This has been fed into him by an adult. And since the story has made it's way into the news, I'd be inclined to look towards the parents.

Huh. Where did you get your degree in pediatric psychology?

captcaveman: Cosmic weirdness in full effect.

Why the obnoxious blue text?

I only ask in case you have a reason and genuinely didn't know it was obnoxious, because otherwise it's ignore list time.

OK SURE WHATEVER, CYA

Exception Collection: imagine walking around wearing nipple clamps that get tighter and then looser every time you take a step.

Go on....

/too good a line

Theaetetus: Huh. Where did you get your degree in pediatric psychology?

http://www.apma.org/

dsriggs: AverageAmericanGuy: I'm glad they caught this early. Imagine the embarrassment he would feel if his hormones kicked in and he wanted to play with Pokemons. He'd be a confused little Pikachexual.

/pet peeve

You know what my pet peeve is? When someone up-front tells you "Hey, I want to be called X", and you call them Y, because you think you have the right to decide what another person is. Like, say, when a child wants to be called a girl, gives off serious signals that he isn't just in a phase, and you decide, nope, you know better than the person involved even though you're a farking ocean away and have never met the kid--if she has a penis, she's a boy, AND DAMNIT YOU'RE RIGHT!

/It's right up there with the overuse of 'decide' in TFA.
//Amazingly enough, when her brain is telling her she's a girl, that was not any choice she made.
///This is also why we STFU about it. She's a girl. If her brain does something wonky, which as far as I know is nearly zilch chance, she might become a boy someday, but don't hold your breath--she's a girl, live with it.

Director_Mr: Marshall Willenholly: I'm expecting a lot of derp in this thread based on past experience with Fark tranny bashing. I think it's great these parents are aware of their child's gender issues. I wish my parents hadn't tried to beat me and verbally abuse me about my gender dysphoria when I was growing up. Now I'm married with a family and realizing that I'm still living life as the wrong gender. And now I have the big decision of changing my gender and living life the way I really want to, or stay as my parents raised me and be miserable and depressed the rest of my life. It's a horrible way to go through life, and I feel sorry for kids and families like the one on the article. It's hard enough to admit to yourself that you have a mental disorder, it's even harder when people in the outside world are ignorant of your issues and make wide generalizations and discriminatory comments.

I have a hard time understanding the mental illness that results in fixating on your gender and deciding you are the wrong one. Having a penis instead of breasts or vice-versa should not cause you to be miserable and depressed for the rest of your life unless you are experiencing mental illness. And swapping one for the other won't resolve that.

Try to tell us all day long about how you were born this way or whatever. But you were born mentally ill. Perhaps meds or therapy is a better step forward than mutilating yourself.

What freaking cave do you live in??

It used to be that this was considered a mental illness or freakishly weird, but in recent years, more latitude, understanding and research has been directed towards this disorder--and it IS a disorder. Why in the world would someone willingly surgically reassign their bodies, go through the hormone therapy, change their name--hell, their entire identity--risk being cast out of their families and social circles and endure this exhausting process if they weren't being driven to do so by a total physiological and biological message that is emanating from their brain?

/People who stand in judgment of others so easily also possess a mental illness: FARKING BIGOTRY

When I was 4, I wanted to be Speed Racer. Well, I really just wanted the Mach 5.

Now that I think about it, I still want the Mach 5.

Theaetetus: Huh. Where did you get your degree in pediatric psychology?

The University of I Used to be a Farking Four Year Old, where I received a Masters degree in Being a Four Year Old.

I have no doubt that the kid has issues going on, obviously he does if he's trying to ixnay his unkjay, I'm simply stating there is no way this kid came upon these ideas on his own.

glassbottomboatcaptain: Theaetetus: Huh. Where did you get your degree in pediatric psychology?

The University of I Used to be a Farking Four Year Old, where I received a Masters degree in Being a Four Year Old.

I have no doubt that the kid has issues going on, obviously he does if he's trying to ixnay his unkjay, I'm simply stating there is no way this kid came upon these ideas on his own.

Well it's a good thing we have real doctors who actually research this stuff for a living so we don't have to rely on idiots like you.

TrixieDelite: TrixieDelite: Director_Mr: Marshall Willenholly: I'm expecting a lot of derp in this thread based on past experience with Fark tranny bashing. I think it's great these parents are aware of their child's gender issues. I wish my parents hadn't tried to beat me and verbally abuse me about my gender dysphoria when I was growing up. Now I'm married with a family and realizing that I'm still living life as the wrong gender. And now I have the big decision of changing my gender and living life the way I really want to, or stay as my parents raised me and be miserable and depressed the rest of my life. It's a horrible way to go through life, and I feel sorry for kids and families like the one on the article. It's hard enough to admit to yourself that you have a mental disorder, it's even harder when people in the outside world are ignorant of your issues and make wide generalizations and discriminatory comments.

I have a hard time understanding the mental illness that results in fixating on your gender and deciding you are the wrong one. Having a penis instead of breasts or vice-versa should not cause you to be miserable and depressed for the rest of your life unless you are experiencing mental illness. And swapping one for the other won't resolve that.

Try to tell us all day long about how you were born this way or whatever. But you were born mentally ill. Perhaps meds or therapy is a better step forward than mutilating yourself.

What freaking cave do you live in??

It used to be that this was considered a mental illness or freakishly weird, but in recent years, more latitude, understanding and research has been directed towards this disorder--and it IS a disorder. Why in the world would someone willingly surgically reassign their bodies, go through the hormone therapy, change their name--hell, their entire identity--risk being cast out of their families and social circles and endure this exhausting process if they weren't being driven to do so by a total physiological an ...

Director


Trixie, I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not, but "disorder" is a modern niced up way of saying "mentally ill". Lets use the example of someone who was black that wanted to be white. They wanted to be white so bad they would disfigure themselves. Or wanted plastic surgery so many times that they disfigured themselves and became like Michael Jackson. Or someone who hears voices telling themselves to cut off their arm. When who you are disturbs you so much that you have to mutilate yourself to change it, that's not normal or healthy.

If you are someone who thinks they are "transgendered", hopefully by cutting off your penis and digging a vag into you where you don't have it, or cutting out your vag and building a pseudo-penis will make you feel better about yourself, but odds are it won't. You will continue to be mentally ill and go off into some other problems. I know 2 people personally who did this kind of surgery. They didn't become any happier after it, and one committed suicide. I didn't mock them, nor did anyone else. But from where I am, this whole transgender thing is a scam that sucks up a ton of money from some mentally ill person who desperately wants to believe this will make things better, and it doesn't.

Call me someone who lives in a freakin cave if you want, it doesn't change what I've seen and known.

glassbottomboatcaptain: The University of I Used to be a Farking Four Year Old, where I received a Masters degree in Being a Four Year Old.

You were a four year old for six years?

Might explain a lot if true. Wonder if this effect is exponential the older you got?

Exception Collection: Which just shows how little you know about the process and what goes into it. We're required to go through therapy before doing anything; we're also required to go through hormonal treatment and live as our real gender for at least a year before we can have surgery.

Personally? I spent close to a decade and a half in a completely depressive state; there were very few things that could (on their own) break me free from that state. I tried medicine; they just made me feel "flat" - emotionless.


So let me ask you a question, did going through the surgery change things for you as much as you were expecting?

Director_Mr: I know 2 people personally who did this kind of surgery. They didn't become any happier after it, and one committed suicide.

And it never occurred to you that undergoing surgery not only didn't change what was "wrong" in their brains, but also didn't change the pretty effed-up way the rest of the world tends to regard this sort of thing in general- operation or no?

Transgenderism is an Affectation.

four95: doubled99: This is a documented disorder


That's a fairly thin statement right there.

It's documented yes, but by a very small group of psychologists and physicians and is not by any means an accepted standard or metric for diagnosis worldwide. And based on this article (and one or two others), this particular child does not meet 2 of the four main criteria for diagnosis based on their own definitions so basically this is a case of today's medical and psychiatric industries screwing another child up royally.

Just because the kid goes through a phase where he plays dress-up and plays with dolls doesn't mean he was born the wrong gender. He is only FOUR. There has not been anywhere NEAR enough developmental time for this child. At four years old, sexuality one way or another is a meaningless term. At that age children are still not even fully aware that there are physical differences, let alone physiological and sexual ones. This story reeks of two parents using their child for attention and almost criminal assistance from a "professional" medical care group.

If this WAS legit, and the parents were at the end of their rope and wanted the best possible future for their child, they would keep this a quiet as possible, allow whatever treatment was necessary and protect the poor kids privacy. But that isn't what's happening here. Blurting this kind of thing for all to hear will only serve to hurt the kid in the future. Kids are mean and as they get older this kid is going to take a lot of abuse whether this story is true or not.

Leave the kid alone and try parenting instead of blind acceptance (Oh... He thinks he's a girl. OK, lets just go to the doctors) and maybe the poor kid will stand a chance. I am NOT saying that this may not be a legitimate condition, but I AM saying that in THIS particular case? I smell shenanigans.

Yeah I agree with you, something is not right.

A four year old understanding that his penis is a significant part of him being a boy. I don't for one moment believe that and have my suspicisions that maybe in 2010 something happened to him and his penis and that is why he wants rid of it.
Also putting him in the daily fail, what caring mother would do that? None.

I think the mother knows all the right things to say, but something is not right here.

letrole: Transgenderism is an Affectation.

urmom is an Affectation?

cryinoutloud: Director

cryinoutloud: Did you ever read that book by Kafka about the guy who woke up one day as a cockroach? I've never heard of anyone reading that story and saying, "But he shouldn't base his identity on his outward appearance! He's still the same person he was before he woke up as a cockroach!" No, instead it's a pretty disturbing story of how messed up things can get when what we think is real doesn't match what we see in the mirror.

I take it this means that you'd be OK if you woke up one day with boobs and no penis and started having periods. But nobody can tell--you can wear baggy clothes, don't tell anyone. Well, sex is kind of out, but that's not the most important thing in life. It's kind of shocking, but what's your problem? It's not like you lost your legs or something.

So this wouldn't bug you too much, right? Because if it does, you must be mentally ill. You can still be a guy outwardly. Get over it.


I fail to see how being a guy or a girl would amount to the same amount of change as turning into a cockroach. If one day I magically turned into a woman, I would learn to live with it. How would that rule out sex? Heck, I can think of several advantages of finding myself to be a woman. It just seems WAY healthier to make the most out of what you are rather than spend so much money, time, and heartache changing it. In the end you will still be the same person you were before, just mutilated.

If you'll permit me; I'd like to play devil's advocate:

I'm a lesbian; but I'm also a dude. I demand hot women to have lesbian sex with. I also demand that all of you acknolage my lesbianism.

/ do-do-doodley-doodley-do
// also, I want to use women's restrooms
///but I keep the wiener, and looking like a dude
// I keed, I keed
/ slashies!!!!

TrixieDelite: It used to be that this was considered a mental illness or freakishly weird, but in recent years, more latitude, understanding and research has been directed towards this disorder--and it IS a disorder.

Ok, I'm not downplaying the validity of the disorder, but just what I got from his post, is that he means the part about being depressed and unhappy has more to do with your intellectual processes than your disorder, how you react to the problem, rather than the problem itself.

Everyone has things they don't like about their body, and many people don't even have functioning bodies at all. I know some people who have a minor physical disability, and their lives are defined by defeatism, and depression. And then I know a guy who's had MS since his teens who barely has enough remaining motor control to operate his chair, and he's an extremely positive person with an active social life (fun fact: a motorized wheelchair is a guaranteed backstage pass at any concert). While I know having issues with your entire gender goes far beyond not being happy with your body, at some point, for ever person dealing with a physical or mental hardship, the ultimate factor in whether they dwell on it and let it consume them, or overcome it and be happy that they even have what they have, their your own cognitive process, and that cannot be fixed by surgery.

When I was four, I wanted to be free of expectations...

Director_Mr: It just seems WAY healthier to make the most out of what you are

Maybe that's exactly what they're doing?

Sorry, seemed like an obvious question.

halotosis: http://healthland.time.com/2011/02/02/mind-reading-neuroscientist-v-s - ramachandran-on-unlearning-pain/

I have personally met VS Ramachandran. If you are more curious, you should read his book, phantoms in the brain.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Phantoms_in_the_brain.html?id=Xby M JzNNGq4C

I'd dig up some academic papers, but you'd have to pay to access them.

Cool link, thanks...I'd heard of this guy's work before, hadn't read much on him.

captcaveman: I've heard of soul displacement, but this is getting ridiculous. As some beliefs report, the soul enters a new body after it leaves its old body at death. Normally this soul is genderless unless it remembers its past life in some detail and that vision of self is so strong that it bleeds into the new body. This is pure speculation on my part. I have no religion, but energy is energy.

I has to go somewhere.

What if it ended up in a new body and remembered whom it was last?

Cosmic weirdness in full effect.

Clearly, the answer is timecube.

stryker4526: Well it's a good thing we have real doctors who actually research this stuff for a living so we don't have to rely on idiots like you

That would be a valid point, if I was contradicting anything medical. The one, and only point I am making, is that when you are at a stage in life where almost all your knowledge about yourself, the world, and sexuality come from those immediately around you, it's not entirely illogical to assume that this childs decision that he is a girl trapped in a boys body is a direct result of that immediate environment.

The diagnosis of the disorder itself does not address the *cause* of the disorder. Gender Identity Disorder is not a medical diagnosis that you actually are a woman trapped in a man's body, merely that you feel that way, whether the cause is biological or a learned behavior (I heard mommy and daddy say they wanted a girl instead of a boy, I get scolded for having erections, I notice that my sister is more favored than me, etc) has nothing to do with the medical diagnosis of the condition.

Basically what we have here is a bunch of dimwits with poor comprehension skills accusing me of refuting a medical diagnosis that I have not actually refuted.

Do they no longer split this into two categories? When I was studying there was one for young children that they could potentially grow out of and one for older kids who were likely to get reassignment surgery. I haven't looked at a DSM lately, are they up to version V yet? Or is it one disorder on a spectrum now?

As for the parents, I'm happy they're working with the child, and the school is working with the child, and this is much more towards the norm of how I want this to be handled. I'm also glad they changed the farking bathrooms. My trans friends have many, many problems with public restrooms.

One of the real interesting case studies we covered in one of my psych classes--I forget which one--was a guy who had a brain injury and became convinced that his arm wasn't his.

We'll say left arm for the sake of argument--I don't remember which arm.

Intellectually he knew it was attached to his body, physically he could move it and operate it, but his brain was absolutely convinced that that was not his arm. He was very, very distressed about having an arm that "wasn't his" attached to his body, and they couldn't just reason or talk therapy or medicate their way past that eerie sensation that the arm wasn't his.

It wasn't like a conversion disorder---you can hypnotize people out of those. It wasn't a psychotic delusion or hallucination--you can medicate that.

That case, and other cases like it, are part of how we know that certain aspects of people's perception of their bodies are strictly a matter of brain hardware. If your brain hardware says your body is a certain way, then there is nothing psychology or psychiatry can do to convince you on a gut level that it is not, and there is nothing psychology or psychiatry can do to make you stop feeling extremely distressed that your actual body that you perceive with your senses doesn't match what your brain hardware is telling you your body is.

I have bipolar disorder. I started talking about suicide when I was five. A lot of the other kids thought I was pretty weird. The experts used to firmly believe kids couldn't get bipolar. It's a genetic disorder--not everyone with the genes gets it, but they're not sure what triggers it. Anyway, since you have your genes from the moment you're conceived, you don't just get them when you grow up----it turned out to be the big duh that those of us with the genes for coming down with bipolar disorder might not be so perfectly "normal" in childhood, either. That there might already be signs that we were "different" before we got full-blown ill.

Now we recognize early-onset bipolar disorder in kids, partly because it's more talked about and we can get better family histories. When you have several things that might be causing a kid's symptoms, knowing whether there's a family history of bipolar and who in the family has it can make a big diagnostic difference. Big duh---people are carrying their genes around from conception.

In the case of gender identity, the human brain develops as female unless dosed with enough male sex hormones prenatally and immediately post-natally. How much testosterone the fetus/newborn gets during those critical brain development stages determines a lot about personality, and also determines whether that brain is telling the child, "I'm a boy, my body is shaped like this," or is telling the child, "I'm a girl, my body is shaped like this." (And then, later, the adult.)

That's regardless of what the eyes and fingers and five senses generally are telling the child (and later, the adult) his or her body actually is shaped like.

Neurobiologists know, from animal experimentation, that by experimentally controlling the exposure of the fetus/infant to testosterone, they can absolutely determine which brain pattern, male or female, the animal develops. (Rats. Not sure what other animals this particular experiment's been replicated with. Live critters are expensive, and if you're studying mating behaviors, you have to wait for them to mature.)

The parents are doing exactly the right thing in case this is a phase, by providing gender-neutral clothing in Zachy's closet. By not making a big production out of embracing Zachy's girly-ness, just allowing it, and by not forbidding it or making a big production of punishing the girly-ness, the parents are giving the child the best possible chance to simply get bored with the change.

So if it is a case of a four year old who thinks being a squirrel is a valid career choice, then he grows out of it.

On the other hand, if it's a case where Zachy's got a girl brain in a boy body, then they at least know early enough to use hormones to help her keep her features feminine. That's likely to be very important to her when she's grown.

I think a lot of farkers can't make the distinction between what you wish psychology and psychiatry and the state of the science all are on gender identity issues and what they actually are.

For a lot of you, it's like creationists faced with evolution. You have a big emotional investment in your worldview----in this case it's a worldview about gender and the human mind----and you're running on pure emotion and don't care what the facts are.

Frankly, it would be worlds easier if people with gender identity issues were just having psychotic delusions. We'd just be able to medicate that away--at worst it would be a matter of looking for the right pill.

It's not that easy.

And they do have a mental disorder. The reason we're less likely to consider it a mental illness, per se, is because it's not that their neurotransmitters are out of balance or that they have lesions across their brain or plaque buildups in their brain or abnormally low levels of helper cells, or seizures.

Unless the person with gender identity issues also has some other diagnosable brain problem, their brain is more or less normal and healthy. It's just the wrong type for their body----like putting a left shoe on a right foot.

If you cram a left shoe on your right foot, and it's a close-fitting shoe, it's going to hurt your foot and cramp your foot. You may start off with a perfectly normal, healthy right foot, and a perfectly normal, functional left shoe----but your foot is going to hurt, and over time that shoe may even damage your foot.

Still, it's hardly accurate to call the condition of having a mismatched brain "mentally ill." And the part where that's about more than semantics is that to say "mentally ill" falsely suggests that if we gave people the right pill or laid them down on the right couch to tell Herr Doktor about their childhood we could "fix" them----where "fix" means get them to arbitrarily accept "it's all in your head, dear."

We (mental health folks) don't just tell people problems are all in their head and give them pills to help them believe that. A lot of laymen think that's what we do, but it's not. We change people's external situations along with their internal ones all the damn time. It's more often than not that fixing someone's internal issues involve fixing some of their external circumstances, too.

Women who've had mastectomies don't get told to just live without a breast if they feel mutilated and un-sexy. Therapy helps them evaluate that as one of their options--that they can come to feel whole and reclaim their sexuality without a breast(s). Or, they can get surgery to bring their body back into line with their mental image of their body. Helping them through the process of choosing, including the process of fixing the external in whatever way they choose (prosthesis, clothing choices, whatever), is part of mental health care.

There are all kinds of mental health problems that affect your life in ways that aren't all in your head, and getting healthy involves systematically taking on the externals. Not just being told there, there, that's okay, just shut the fark up and be sane.



DISCLAIMER:
I do have a psychology degree. I've kept up a lot of reading over the years. I am not an expert on gender identity issues or the particular mental health/social adjustment experiences commonly faced by members of the GLBT community.

Not this Dora?

glassbottomboatcaptain: Basically what we have here is a bunch of dimwits with poor comprehension skills

Halotosis posted an excellent thesis on the "medical" side of the diagnosis (honestly I'd never thought of applying psychosomatic disorder frameworks to what is normally framed as a gender identity issue).

I guess you've been too busy arguing with people to spot it.

Reader! Comprehend thyself!

Ghastly: captcaveman: but energy is energy.

I has to go somewhere.


Like the energy in my AA batteries that power my kaossilator. When the batteries are dead their energy just goes into another set of batteries. But if they remember being used in a synthesizer then they make the flashlight they go into in their next life play music.

Oh. Is that why my maglight keeps buzzing?

letrole: Transgenderism is an Affectation.

The amount of derp in this thread is amazing

SkunkWerks: I guess you've been too busy arguing with people to spot it.

In all fairness, I wouldn't have been arguing with anyone, if people *cough* weren't accusing me of refuting a diagnosis I was not refuting.

glassbottomboatcaptain: SkunkWerks: I guess you've been too busy arguing with people to spot it.

In all fairness, I wouldn't have been arguing with anyone, if people *cough* weren't accusing me of refuting a diagnosis I was not refuting.

In fairness, if they're still arguing with you, and you're convinced you're not doing what they're accusing you of, why not cut your losses?

Creoena: The amount of derp in this thread is amazing

My derp has decided that it is actually genius observation trapped in derp's external coverings, and if you disagree, you're basically Hitler.

SkunkWerks: In fairness, if they're still arguing with you, and you're convinced you're not doing what they're accusing you of, why not cut your losses?

This was a teachable moment, about how you jump on people for things they haven't actually said, but you ruined it man. You ruined it.

glassbottomboatcaptain: SkunkWerks: I guess you've been too busy arguing with people to spot it.

In all fairness, I wouldn't have been arguing with anyone, if people *cough* weren't accusing me of refuting a diagnosis I was not refuting.

There's a nice long post a few posts back that maybe you should read.