No longer Germaine

To give an idea of the sometimes comic but always spiteful nature of some strains of "feminist transphobia", see http://www.transadvocate.com/sex-essentialism-terfs-and-smelly-vaginas_n_14924.htm

 "Most recently, Germaine Greer made headlines (in queer media circles) for appealing to a bad vagina smell as being essential to authentic womanhood. During a question and answer session at The Cambridge Union, in which she again asserted trans medical care to be unethical, Greer suggested that trans women aren’t truly women because trans women don’t know what it is “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina.”

Interestingly, prior to Greer asserting that trans women don’t have smelly vaginas, Sheila Jeffreys asserted that trans women have incredibly smelly vaginas, asserting, “The newly carved-out orifices of male-bodied transgenders do not resemble vaginas [and] create new microbial habitats in which infections develop and cause serious smell issues for their owners.

That's fairly typical. First a bizarre test of what sex someone *really* is - this one, genital aroma, is in fact an article of faith amongst TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists), Then the unevidenced assertions that Trans women don't pass the test due to diametrically opposite reasons - one because they do, one because they don't - all asserted without a shred of evidence.

The Religious Right is anti-Trans because Transsexuality undermines a well-ordered society where men are men and women are women, that it's all a Leftist plot to undermine the Gender Binary. (See former pope Benedict's speeches on the subject).

The TERFs are anti-Trans because Transsexuality upholds the Gender Binary, and that Trans people are tools of the Patriarchy.

This appropriation of Trans people is discussed well and with some wit at http://quinnae.com/2010/10/01/i-am-whoever-you-say-i-am/


As an aside, the microbial flora in neo-vaginas is nearly identical to that of the usual kind in premenstrual girls, but that's merely a fact and so irrelevant to the issue.

"Weyers and his colleagues studied 50 postsurgical transsexual women and found microbial microflora that were simiilar to those of premenstrual girls:

Our study indicates that the microflora of the neovagina is characterized by bacterial species from the skin and the intestinal microflora, somewhat similar to what is observed with premenarchal girls…

They also found microbial populations similar to those of women with vaginitis, and they noted an absense of lactobacilii (which is present in the vaginas of ovulating women, but not in girls) in all but one of their subjects."

But to go into this just buys into their irrationality. Like trying to argue with Flat Earthers.

Republican Puts $2,500 Bounty on Transgender Children

Republican Puts $2,500 Bounty on Transgender People | Alternet

Think Progress breaks down the insanity:

The bill provides that any student who encounters “a person of the opposite biological sex” in a bathroom or locker room shall have a legal cause of action if it’s because the school gave the trans student permission or didn’t explicitly prohibit the trans student from using thatfacility. The “aggrieved” student would be entitled to $2,500 from the offending school “for each instance” he or she encountered a trans student in a sex-divided facility in addition to monetary damages “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” and attorney fees.

Embry has stated that the bill will help schools avoid the “potential embarrassment, shame, and psychological injury to students” that he believes naturally occurs when trans people are allowed to use restrooms in accordance with their gender identity.

A $2500 payment for detecting an Intersex or Trans schoolkid using a restroom at school sounds like a bounty to me. Just as there's a bounty on detecting other noxious vermin such as fire ants in some places.

Remember, this is no ordinary bill. This is an EMERGENCY bill to combat the epidemic of psychological damage being reported by medics all over the USA as the result of children seeing a trans or intersex kid at school.

Well, so Fox news and "Dr" Keith Ablow would have us believe.

The Pacific Justice Institute is looking for parents of kids who have been damaged like this to come forth and tell their tragic stories, and are willing to pay top dollar. They'll be releasing a damning expose any day now, they promise. Meanwhile, continuing donations are needed to pay for this important work.

From the Bill's text -

"Biological sex" means the physical condition of being male or female, which is determined by a person's chromosomes, and is identified at birth by a person's anatomy..."

So appearance at birth determines the  chromosomes. Which in turn define "biological sex".

Not exactly scientifically literate, is he?

It wasn't always like this....

And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes,
Joe says, "What they can never kill,
Went on to organise.

-- Joe Hill

From

Royal College of Psychiatrists – (UK)

16 April 2002

Trans People in the New NHS

Historical context:

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Trans people were understood to experience a congenital physical condition, and after appropriate clinical intervention, they had full civil liberties in their real sex. Their Birth Certificates could be corrected, they could marry if they wished, and live otherwise ordinary lives. In the late 1960s, however, two events contributed to a massive change in that status. First – and ironically at the point at which gay men were decriminalised in the UK, in 1967 – in the USA, John Money announced that he had solved the dilemma of whether nature or nurture decide our gender.

One of a pair of twin boy babies had accidentally been penectomised during circumcision, had been reassigned as female, never told of his reassignment, and brought up as a girl. Money, a self-styled ‘missionary of sex’ announced that, after long-term follow up, the girl had successfully adjusted to her new role and that it was, therefore, nurture and not nature that decided the gender of people. Incredibly, on the basis of one single case, that view became the dominant one. It was clear by analogy that Transsexualism was not congenital, and that Trans people should respond to nurture if it was persistent enough and firm enough.

Second, in 1970, the case of Corbett v Corbett ‘criminalised’ Trans people by removing civil status recognition from them. The effect of that trial was comparable to the effect of the trials of Oscar Wilde and of Radclyffe Hall: it produced ‘a brilliantly precise image’ of the Trans community, a ‘grafting of a narrow set of cultural signifiers’ onto an ostensibly homogenous body of Trans people. In the public imagination, Trans people would always be Trans women [so that Trans men became invisible] and Trans women would always be, in the judge’s terms, ‘a pastiche of femininity’, a sort of teapot-elegant drag-queen, a kind of figure of fun. Equally seriously, Trans people were no longer allowed to correct their Birth Certificates, could not marry, could not adopt, were sent to the wrong sex prison [where Trans women at least were routinely raped by male inmates and warders alike] and it became the norm for them to be dismissed from employment as soon as their condition was disclosed, whether at diagnosis or later. With further irony, in 1980, as homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Registered Mental Illnesses (DSM), Transsexualism was placed in it, to confirm by medicine this new edict of the law.

The first response of the UK Trans community was to feel crushed, and the second was to organise.

... in 1998, in the USA, Professor Milton Diamond discovered the real outcome of John Money’s iconoclastic research: the child who had been reassigned as a girl had never been happy in the female gender role; he had always experienced his gender as male, despite his female rearing, and female hormone treatment, and as soon as he was able he had reassigned to his male identity. John Money’s findings for his research were revealed as being grossly inaccurate at best, but not before a generation of tertiary specialists had been at least misdirected by someone who, for many of them, had been their mentor and pre-eminent amongst them. From the point of view of Trans people, of course, a generation of patients had been inadequately and inhumanely treated.

When Worlds Collide.

World-views anyway.

 Here are two therapeutic handbooks, both widely used in psychological counseling.

The first is
The Christian World View of Psychology and Counseling
www.reformation.net/COR_Docs/Christian_Worldview_Psychology.pdf
Mr. George C. Scipione, Th.M., M.A., Chairman
Dr. Lawrence Crabb, Ph.D., Co-Chairman
Dr. Ed Payne, M.D., Co-Chairman
With contributions by members of the Psychology and Counseling Committee of The Coalition on Revival
Dr. Jay Grimstead, D.Min., General Editor
Mr. E. Calvin Beisner, M.A., Assistant to the General Editor

6. Scientific Method
We affirm that the scientific method is useful in carrying out the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28 to subdue and have dominion over creation when the investigators have Biblical presuppositions and when the Bible does not directly give us the answers we seek; that the use of the scientific method is entirely controlled by the presuppositions of the investigators and therefore the results are a pronouncement of faith rather than of scientific fact; and that the faith nature of the results of scientific investigation is evidenced by the investigators’ proselytizing intent, that is, their attempt to transform man into their idea of what man should be.
We deny that the scientific method can ever be applied in psychology without its being thoroughly determined by the presuppositions of the investigators.
...
23 Angels and Demons
We affirm that creatures who have only a spiritual dimension exist, that some serve God faithfully(angels) and others are in active rebellion against God (demons), and that the latter may possess unregenerate persons and oppress or influence regenerate persons.
We deny that the Christian counselor may neglect the reality of demons, and that personal problems, organic or non-organic, are never the result of the influence of or possession by demons.

In this world view, scientific results are a pronouncement of faith, not facts. Evil Spirits and Demons exist, and can even "possess" people.

Here's another handbook, and a quite different world view. One where objective evidence exists, where facts matter. One devoid of ghosts and goblins.


Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health
7th Version 2011
www.wpath.org/uploaded_files/140/files/IJT%20SOC,%20V7.pdf

Mental health professionals need to be certified or licensed to practice in a given country according to that country’s professional regulations (Fraser, 2009b; Pope & Vasquez, 2011). Professionals must adhere to the ethical codes of their professional licensing or certifying organizations in all of their work with transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming clients.

Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and lived gender expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), yet without success, particularly in the long term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly, 1965). Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.

If mental health professionals are uncomfortable with or inexperienced in working with transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals and their families, they should refer clients to a competent provider or, at minimum, consult with an expert peer. If no local practitioners are available, consultation may be done via telehealth methods, assuming local requirements for distance consultation are met.

The results of using the first rather than the second are often fatal. Literally.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=27912326

In the note, Alcorn details the difficulty she said she faced growing up.

"The life I would've lived isn't worth living in… because I'm transgender," read a portion of the post. "I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy's body, and I've felt that way ever since I was 4," the note states.
...

The note reportedly written by Alcorn detailed her experience coming out as gay and wrote that her peers and school were receptive, but that her parents were not. She said she was taken to Christian therapists, who did not help her overcome her depression.

"After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong," the note states.

The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren't treated the way I was," reads the post. "They're treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something."

"Christian Counseling" kills Trans kids. Not an opinion, a fact, with a mountain of corpses as evidence for that. Now one more.

Superstition,  Snake-oil and Witchdoctors have no place in psychological therapy. They should be prevented from killing children.

From the religious site, http://catholicexchange.com

"Now I am going to say something that may seem harsh but remember I am talking to you about objective reality – where the rubber meets the road. It is better to die than to offend God."

When dealing with a case possibly involving suicidal ideation, I feel such a statement, however sincere and well-meant, is likely to be counterproductive, and that death is in fact not a more desirable outcome compared to mainstream medical treatment.

At least some "Christian Counselors" differ on that.