Hmmmm...Brains....

Putting the New in Neurology.

A Sceptical look at Functional MRI, where the limitations are discussed.

Most neuromarketers are using these scans as a way of sprinkling glitter over their products, so that customers will be persuaded that the pictures are giving them a deeper understanding of their mind. In fact, imaging technologies are still in their infancy. And while overenthusiastic practitioners may try to leapfrog over the science, real progress, which will take decades, will be made by patient and methodical researchers, not by entrepreneurs looking to make a buck.

And talking about Magnetic personalities, How a Magnet Turned Off My Speech :

Disconcertingly for me (Prof Walsh seemed unconcerned), he had difficulty finding my Broca's and only succeeded after he called for a bigger coil to be used, as powerful magnetic pulses were delivered through my skull by his colleague, Dr Neil Muggleton.
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I was reciting Humpty Dumpty and hoping that all the Queens Square's neurologists and all the Queens neurosurgeons would not have to put my brain back together again.

Finally he located my Broca's and the train of pulses stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to recite the rhyme but stumbled and stuttered as my speech area was disabled.

Intriguingly, I could still sing Humpty Dumpty as he buffetted my Broca's: it turns out that singing is controlled by the right side of the brain, the opposite hemisphere to the one he stimulated.

"That is why you can sing but not talk."

This is also why some people with stroke can sing sentences, even though they cannot speak.
...
Prof Allan Snyder, at the University of Sydney believes TMS can act as "a creativity-amplifying machine".

But Prof Walsh is highly sceptical. "Brain stimulation does not release hidden talents and when it is used to improve things in patients, it comes at the cost of blocking some nerve pathways to encourage others."

Finally some thoughts on neurology and.. well, the usual. Over at Bilerico.

That all human behaviour has a neural basis is a truism, but isn't useful. We need to distinguish between lower-level functions that are immutable or nearly so, and much higher-level functions which are utterly changeable as the result of day-to-day experience.

Examples of the first: sexual orientation, eyesight. Examples of the second: whether to vote Republican or Democrat, whether you prefer Techno or Classical music.

And of course, there's no neat binary. We can easily distinguish extremes at both ends, but in the middle it gets blurry.

Even the most basic functions are somewhat mutable. Case in point, a man who has woken up from a multi-decade coma. His neurology differs from any other human on the planet, with parts of the brain re-wired over decades so the speech centre isn't where speech is any more. Then there those who have suffered traumatic brain injury, losing over 40% of their brain mass, and much of the rest being disrupted. Some are still able to think in nearly the same way as they were before.

Against those handful of cases, and the much larger sample where some neural deficits caused by disease and trauma have been "wired around", there are tens of thousands where even small lesions in specific areas have caused devastating and permanent cognitive deficits.

In theory, it may be possible for even some basic injuries at the hypothalamic layer to heal, given time. But as such injuries often stop the patient from breathing, or having a heartbeat, they don't have the decades needed.

So although nearly everything is mutable in some individuals to a tiny extent, in practice, much is not, not at all, not in the slightest.

Gender Identity in those who are strongly gendered is very basic. In those who are weakly gendered, close to the line, whether they appear more F than M or the reverse is determined by progressively higher and higher level functions, and will need progressively less and less heroic measures to change.

Those with classic HBS in the strong sense, it's really basic. You can torture them, psychoanalyse them, give them aversion therapy (the full Clockwork Orange treatment), totally disrupt their neurology with psychotropic drugs, even carve out pieces of their frontal lobes, and you won't do a thing to it. And all have been tried at one time or another, this isn't theoretical, alas.

A good but imperfect metric for HBS is desire for surgery. It's imperfect because although body-image is closely coupled to gender identity, it appears not to be perfectly so, and this is where I differ from proponents of the strong form of HBS theory. Some who desire surgery will do so for legal reasons, or so they can be sexually functional, not because it causes great discomfort.

Others can be quite comfortable with a strongly gendered mind, but an ambiguous or cross-gendered body. They don't care what they have, as long as it works. Many Intersexed people are in this category. I suspect that many "non-ops" are too, but lacking data, this is a mere conjecture, as is much of what I'm saying.

There are people whose general gendering is significantly weaker, yet whose body image is so strongly sexed, they will move heaven and earth to have the right body configuration, one that matches their mind. This can easily be mistaken for AG/AA, but unlike a fetish, it's a product of deep neural processes, not high-level ones. To say that it's akin to apotemnophilia, the desire for limb amputation when the body-image is defective, is technically true, but highly misleading. So misleading, you can treat it as false.

A far more accurate view is to say that it's akin to the desire of an amputee or someone with a congenital defect to have the missing limb restored, so the body images match. It restores function, not removes it.

Whether apotemnophilia or its healthy converse is a low-level or high level function probably varies. A beggar in a 3rd world country may desire amputation in order to beg more effectively ("high level"). One in a modern country may just be psychotic (also "high level" if it's treatable by anti-psychotic drugs etc).

A desire for limb restoral could be not because of any inate discomfort, but because of the practical difficulties of wheelchairs, crutches, and artificial limbs (also "high level").

Many cases though are probably low-level, and in those rare cases of intense low-level apotemnophilia, amputation of a perfectly healthy limb may be justifiable on humane grounds. Some doctors seem to think so.

Those amputees whose intense discomfort with their situation results from low-level mismatch with body image, and who are unable with current technology to regrow limbs, often suicide, despite having an objectively reasonable life in most ways. The comparison with those with HBS is unavoidable.

Fortunately, those cases appear rare. The discomfort can be lived with, and with sufficient therapeutic help to accept the situation, the "higher level" functionality can to some extent mask the "low-level" discomfort, with coping behaviour. Such a conflict causes its own problems though, and again, you get the same kinds of thing happening with those who are not classically transsexual, but have "gender issues" and will never transition.

It all fits in a common pattern of informal clinical observations. But without harder data to back it up, all it's useful for is as the basis for research, or possibly treatment in areas where we don't have the faintest idea what we're doing and lack any other explanation.

About the only area where we do have data hard enough to be useful as the basis of a therapeutic regime is in classical HBS. And even then, some will deny that.

Let's You and Him Her fight

A hilarious piece showing that there's room for humour in US Politics. Sorry, humor.



And of course, he has to send himself up as well...

The Three Models of Transsexuality

Over at Bilerico by Mercedes Allen, one of the writers on the subject I most admire. Worth a read, and the comments are as illuminating as the original post. Some even know what they're talking about.

And a post over at Bad Science:

What Sex are you? How would you react if someone told you you were wrong?

This is a post about sex and gender. It briefly describes some of the science, some of the junk science, and some of the exaggerations and occasional falsifications on all sides.

How do you define what is a man, and what is a woman? It would be useful if your definition didn't involve apparent absurdities like biological mothers being classed as men, and biological fathers being classed as women, but that's no insuperable barrier. It would also be useful if your definition included everyone (so everyone is either M or F, not neither), and no-one is both (so they're either M or F, not both). It is desirable that someone who was once M remains M, and someone who was once F remains F, but again, this is just a desirable property, not set in stone.

Whatever your definition, and whether it meets all or none of those properties, it's essential that it applies to everyone. No saying "Oh, but they're a tiny minority, we'll ignore them". The people concerned will object at this de-humanisation. It's also essential that your definition be humane, so extermination, exile, torture, or compulsory surgery to make people fit the definition are also right out.

It's my contention that no such definition with all the desirable properties above exists.

This post is too long, so I'll just finish up with some reading material that it's essential to look at before you can discuss this from an informed standpoint.

But you'll have to read the whole thing to see the references. Much has already appeared on this blog, but not the bit about Exorcism for example.

This Week's Battles

Let's see... a polite and rational discourse on GaySpecies, some mainly reasoned argument at Moonbattery - I quote "Thanks to you also for replying without hysterics or name calling" - calls for imprisonment of parents and school counsellors over at stop the ACLU, pointing out a few uncomfortable facts at Christianity Today, and Zoe shows her snarky side over at NewsBusters.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan gets it, and lots of commentary goodness over at Dr Warren Throckmorton's, a man who I fear has been vastly misrepresented.

One who hasn't is Michael Bailey. But in a first, he says something that is calm, rational, and something I can agree with. Look, as as scientist, I don't care who utters a Truth, if it's true it's true, regardless of source. I'll quote him:

Children like Adam start showing their behavior early (Adam at 18 months). All evidence we have suggests that only a minority (20% or fewer) of boys like Adam become women eventually. But if parents let boys become girls at childhood, will this drive up the probability? It seems highly plausible that it would. Sex reassignment is not minor medical intervention. It involves major surgery and lifelong hormonal treatments. All other things being equal, sex reassignment is something to be avoided. Of course, not all other things are equal. If a 6 year old boy wants to be a girl, it will cause him more short-term pain to refuse than to acquiesce. The costs and benefits are hard to estimate, and Danielle has been frustrated in her search for data-supported answers. It would be a fitting reward to her admirable example if people could set aside their differences (and the government could uncharacteristically support research on a controversial topic relate to sex), and begin to collect and share requisite data.

In other words... we need more data.

The problem is that as far as I'm aware, there's only one group doing research on the topic in the whole of North America. And that is the group at Jurassic Clarke. There's a reason for this - we know that SRS and HRT work as therapies for adults, and so effort has been concentrated on proven, effective therapy rather than research on causality. Doing experiments on children is almost impossible to get past any ethics review too.

But the data is out there. Children are being given one of three types of therapy on an ad-hoc and unco-ordinated basis by individual therapists: coercive intervention, affirming intervention, and no intervention. The data on the effects isn't being gathered though. This should include long-term studies of not just presence/absence of GID, but also basic mental health. Sexual orientation too, if that's deemed important.

The only area of disagreement on this one that I have with Bailey is a small but important one: I would not consider sustained, prolonged, and systematic torture over most of childhood as being merely "short-term pain". The possibility of sequelae and side-effects such as suicidal ideation, debilitating depression, sexual dysfunction etc is so high in other "reparative therapies" that this should be our major concern here.

Finally, one more datapoint about transsexual neurology. From of all places, The Times of India:

After being trained in the basics of computer operations, Linux Operating System, spread sheets and browsing the internet, the twenty transsexuals, most of whom have never touched the monitor, got certificates from the government-run Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) on Friday.

“No group has ever scored such high marks,'' said ELCOT managing director C Umashankar. Ninety percent of them had scored over 90 marks and the lowest was 80 out of hundred. Remember, ELCOT has been training government servants for three decades. And, the transsexuals had not even touched the text books given to them.

The learners, mostly drop-outs from highschool with one or two graduates and post graduates, have lived most of their life in shadows, till they were spotted by Tamil Nadu Aids Initiative (TAI).

You know, it's almost as if they had some sort of unusual neurology, though it has to be said, the possibility of being raised out of the gutter is a powerful incentive to learn. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard think that it's just because they're festishists who want to look like women, and proficiency in computing is a reliable sign of that. Really. That's what Bailey says in his book. He doesn't say why, merely makes the remark based on observation. Older TS people tend to be good at computing, and as he insists they're all fetishists without exception, the deduction follows.

Sex and the Brain

Part of a continuing series.

Sometimes I get confronted with dogmatic statements of the form "Gender is a Social Construct!". Often stated with great conviction. This has elements of truth - Gender Role is a Social Construct. But Gender itself is not.

From Science Daily, based on the paper Sex Differences in Neural Processing of Language Among Children Burman DD, Talin T, Booth JR, in Neuropsychologia Neuropsychologia
Volume 46, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 1349-1362 :

Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.

For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.
...
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers measured brain activity in 31 boys and in 31 girls aged 9 to 15 as they performed spelling and writing language tasks.

The tasks were delivered in two sensory modalities -- visual and auditory. When visually presented, the children read certain words without hearing them. Presented in an auditory mode, they heard words aloud but did not see them.

Using a complex statistical model, the researchers accounted for differences associated with age, gender, type of linguistic judgment, performance accuracy and the method -- written or spoken -- in which words were presented.

The researchers found that girls still showed significantly greater activation in language areas of the brain than boys. The information in the tasks got through to girls' language areas of the brain -- areas associated with abstract thinking through language. And their performance accuracy correlated with the degree of activation in some of these language areas.

To their astonishment, however, this was not at all the case for boys. In boys, accurate performance depended -- when reading words -- on how hard visual areas of the brain worked. In hearing words, boys' performance depended on how hard auditory areas of the brain worked.

Iy would be fascinating to see an equivalent experiment involving children diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. Adults and Adolescents too. It's my belief that for someone to be transsexual, only one part or complex of the brain need be cross-gendered. But it's probable that other parts will be too. I conjecture that the earlier the manifestation of symptoms, the more likely the brain will be more cross-gendered. I also conjecture that the cross-gendering won't be complete in the majority of cases: that the mind of a transsexual person will conform neither to a wholly male, nor a wholly female pattern, as a general rule.

The same probably applies to many in gender-atypical professions. Female engineers remain totally female, but I conjecture that parts of their brain to do with engineer-type-stuff (to use a technical term) would be somewhere near the middle, rather than at the far end of a "typically female profile".

It would fit. But many a beautiful theory has been slain by an ugly fact. Pending actual experimental results, such conjectures are only useful for suggesting areas of interest to concentrate on in experimentation.

Another area of research is not just to determine the facts, for the study is pretty conclusive to me. It's to find out the cause. Boys and girls of that age think differently, their brains are wired up differently. But why? How much is to do with socialisation and feedback mechanisms, how much is due to hormonal floods at puberty, and how much is pre-ordained in some unknown way by pre-natal factors, probably hormonal, going back to the first trimester?

In my view, the evidence that we have, scanty as it is, is that the latter predominates. How else to explain the 500-fold increase in incidence of transsexuality amongst genetic males exposed to DES in the first trimester? The evidence is that this inborn tendency is very strong in certain areas, and may even be nigh unchangeable in the area of sexual orientation. In Gender Identity, the situation may be more fluid, but even then, the conditioning required to cause the brain to develop in an un-natural fashion "against the grain" is the equivalent of producing bonsai children. Cruel, a low success rate, and with terrible side-effects in many or even most cases.

I wish researchers would do a bit less of the neo-Freudian psychological theorising, and a bit more measuring of how the brain works using fMRI scans. I just want to know, and not just for objective reasons. Let the cards fall as they may, but at least let's observe them, and not deal from the bottom of the deck. Then, armed with knowledge, we can address the moral and ethical issues with some confidence that we're not doing exactly the wrong thing due to the best of intentions.

Previous posts on Gender/Sex Differences in the Brain, and the use of MRI to detect them:

Brains, Genes, and Sexual Orientation in Men
Functional MagnetoResonanceTomography... and Transsexuality
A Reply from a Guy I used to know
Talk is Cheap
Thoughts on Gender
It starts with a kiss
Left, Right, Male and Female Brains
Brain Intersex
Brain Structure

That last one is particularly poignant. June 6, 2005. Only 4 weeks after the first symptoms of my spectacular change appeared. A time which was filled with endless tests and more tests, including an MRI scan. A time when I was finally able to search for data about transsexuality, not knowing whether to deny or accept, or even if denial was possible. It wasn't, of course. A time when the writing was on the wall, and I was summoning enough courage to read it, limiting myself to taking sneak peeks between my fingers. A time when I lay in the bath, observing the bodily changes, part of me terrified that my whole life to that point had ended, and that not only was there no return, but I desperately didn't want to go back into Hell even if that was possible.

My trip to the Gender Centre in Sydney was still two days in the future. There I would be told that my life story wasn't unique as I'd always thought, but utterly typical. I didn't know that. I'd learned a lot in 4 weeks, but there are limits! I was also told yhat changes like mine had happened to several other transsexual women. My first contact with a professional, an expert in the area of diagnosis, rather than treatment. I was TS, as I hoped/feared.

It was still three weeks before I started laser hair removal, and had my ears pierced. Nothing that couldn't be backtracked from, physically, though to me the decision to have my ears pierced was the decision to travel all the way to the end of the line.

To use a well-worn analogy, something of a cliche, I was no longer a caterpillar, but a chrysalis. Now a pretty butterfly, social or otherwise, was never me. It would have been nice in some ways, but really not how I saw myself. A particularly fascinating workaday moth, one not pretty, but possessing a certain beauty anyway, and far more interesting, that was more my style. Still is, come to think of it. I'm.... Happy. Me, Zoe. I hope my readers are too.

Unclear on the Concept

Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Euclid. "There were giants in the Earth" in those days. Intellectual giants, anyway. Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies are those which we all can identify with, from common experience. They are the product of some very keen minds trying to find reasons for things, making observations, then coming up with ideas to explain why things as they are, and trying to determine what should be. The Socratic teaching method is one I use a lot, asking guided questions to let the student reason out the answer for themselves. And when I did my undergrad Thesis on Non-Euclidian Geometry, I was humbled by Euclid's intellect. With 4 simple axioms, and one complex and ugly one, he provided the basis for much of modern mathematics. He must have cursed at the fifth, messy and unaesthetic one, that lacks the simplicity and beauty of the other four, yet is necessary to make geometry work. It is to his credit that he didn't try to cover the messiness up, but exposed it for all to see.

Assuming that fifth axiom is false provides the basis for non-Euclidean geometry, extending the 2-dimensional realm of squares, circles and triangles from planes to the surfaces of spheres, and hyperspheres. Spherical geometry is particularly useful when doing long-distance navigation, so this Pure Mathematics has some decidedly Applied aspects too.

But... these giants, these scholars who are worthy of all the adulation they are given, are not unimpeachable. Sometimes they were dead wrong, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large. Science must always question Authority. In fact, the whole intellectual structure of Academic discourse is based on the free-flow of ideas. When (as sometimes happens) the power-games of political ideology stifle enquiry, then

'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

Weary, Flat, Stale and Unprofitable indeed. (Hamlet 1.2.131-61, Shakespeare)

Some are unclear on the concept. They may adopt the trappings of academe, the facade, but they are at best charlatans, at worst power-mad bullies.

Case in point, one "Dr" Priya Venkatesan, formerly of Dartmouth College. From the Wall Street Journal :

The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."
...
Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery." Then, after consulting a physician about "intellectual distress," she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

From Gawker :

From: Priya Venkatesan
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008
Subject: Class Action Suit

Dear Student:

Please disregard the previous email sent by Priya Venkatesan. This is to officially inform you that you are being accused of violating Title VII pertaining to federal anti-discrimination laws, by the plaintiff, Priya Venkatesan. You are being specifically accused of, but not limited to, harassment. Please do not respond to this email as it will be used against you in a court of law.

Priya Venkatesan, PhD

Yes, she sued her class. Or tried to. One can conjecture as to her understanding of the legal phrase "class action suit". It does not mean suing one's class, for example.

Moving on.. From the Concord Monitor:

Instead, she said, some students attacked the material "as if they were achieved scholars." The students were hostile, rude and abrasive, she said, and ignored her authority as their professor. "They were attacking thinkers that, even with my degrees, I would think twice about attacking," Venkatesan said. "I'm wondering why I was subjected to that behavior. . . . It was just a little disturbing that you'd get a student who'd come up to you after getting a reading assignment and say, 'So I underlined this. This is X, Y and Z why this statement is false.' . . . It consistently kept happening."

One example of the students' egregious behavior, Venkatesan said, was the time the students applauded in class when someone disagreed with her. She said she was lecturing on The Death of Nature, a book by philosopher Carolyn Merchant, and described Merchant's view that the emergence of science contributed to the marginalizing of women.

It can be, and has been, argued that the invention of the washing-machine was the greatest single step in the liberation of women from terminal drudgery. An even greater step forward than the contraceptive pill.

As one person of my acquainyance put it:

Miss Venkatesan, here is a small reality check.
Women were always marginalized in cultures in which greater physical strength was a decisive factor in earning and keeping wealth and power.
In short form, take that as "almost always, almost everywhere".
The emergence of science led directly to the perfection of the machine screw, which led directly to mass production.
Mass production led directly to an explosion of tools and techniques which rendered physical strength largely irrelevant in many jobs.
This led directly to an upsurge in viability for women in a broad range of non-domestic wage-earning careers.
In summary: Science is directly responsible for real liberation of women from their previously ineluctible role as domestic chattel.
Fucking deal with it, dumb ass.

This does not fit the narrative of unending and absolute Patriarchal oppression though, so to raise an ugly fact is not just rude, but a threat. Not just wrong, but Evil. To continue with the article in the Concord Monitor:

An anonymous review posted to a Dartmouth blog details some complaints: "If you decide to take this class, prepare to NOT be allowed to express your own opinions," the reviewer said. "We were forced to write an in-class essay on 'respect' (and how we lacked it) because we expressed our views on controversial topics and some did not agree with the views of 'established scholars.' "

Venkatesan said she's considering taking legal action against Cormen and other faculty. Cormen did not back her up when students complained about her, she said. "He did the academically questionable thing of not supporting a colleague," she said. "That's not academic de rigueur."

It's all about power.

A bit more about "Dr" Vasekaran's background. From the Dartmouth college website, which I expect to be updated soon:

Priya Venkatesan, Ph.D.

After obtaining a BA from Dartmouth College, I have an MS in Genetics from UC Davis and a PhD in Literature from UC San Diego. My first book, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form, was just released. My current position is as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, which will form the basis of my latest manuscript, A Postmodernist in the Laboratory.

That will be the one where she tells all, and names names.

As for her Magnum Opus, Molecular Biology in Narrative Form, or rather, "Molecular Biology in Narrative Form: A Study of the Experimental Trajectory of Science (Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics)", here's the review:

Molecular Biology in Narrative Form is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study that shows a connection between molecular biology and French narrative theory, and, from a unique perspective, bridges the gap between two disciplines that seem mutually exclusive.

Ya Think?

With many new insights on the link between science (in the form of DNA, a set of codes) and literature (in the form of language, another set of codes), this book looks at modern experimental science within the framework of semiotics. Priya Venkatesan reveals the extraordinary parallel between the work of scientists and the work of narratologists who develop narrative paradigms and analyze literary texts. Molecular Biology in Narrative Form will be a useful resource for scientists and literary theorists interested in the epistemological workings of science, as well as, anyone that desires to explore the linkages between scientific theory and literary analysis.

I think that market is... limited. The scientists haven't swallowed the postmodernist claptrap, and the literary theorists aren't too sure if the Sun or the Moon is larger, and whether they go around the Earth or not. The intersection is a null set, mathematically speaking. Not even "Dr" Venkatasan. She's a literary theorist, and no scientist. The PhD in Literature from UC San Diego is, perhaps, understandable. The MS in Genetics from UC Davis is not, and they should have a good look at the procedure for awarding one, else it becomes meaningless.

Still, I've seen worse in Junk Science books on Transsexuality. Really. I wish I was kidding.

The Dynamic Trio

I've just returned after a gruelling drive to Sydney and back. 320 km each way, call it 400 miles for the round-trip.

But worthwhile.

Grace Adams, Stephanie Imbruglia and I gave a lecture together, on TS-101 (with IS-101 to give it context), to a lecture theatre full of students at the Kingswood Campus of the University of Western Sydney.

It's no coincidence that all three of us were victimised by the Australian Passport Office. They get an A for consistency.

We have three rather different styles - Grace is the traditional Aussie Larrikin Sheila (and organised the whole thing), Stephanie is Studied Elegance, and I'm the not Studied but Studious Geek Girl Academic. We disagreed on just enough of the fiddly details to show that we're not part of some monolithic block, just... people. Normal. Women. Which was about the last thing the students expected. Not surprising, given the Jerry Springer Show, and for that matter, Janice Raymond's Transsexual Empire, whose nauseating stench odour of transphobia still permeates many arts departments and feminist courses.

Our three styles complimented each other, rather than clashed. It went well. In fact, in my not so humble opinion, it went very well.

We might even get our rather free-form and unpracticed presentation on video, and put it up on YouTube as a teaching resource.

Afterwards, a trip to Glebe Point Road, only a few hundred metres from Sydney Uni (my old stamping-ground in the late 70's), and coffee with Dr Tracie O'Keefe. Her court battle is still ongoing, and so is sub judice, but one thing I can say: At the last hearing, she was herself, all her opponents were themselves, and who was at least sane, and who were frothing-at-the-mouth loonies was pretty obvious. She's cautiously optimistic, as the sheer irrationality of her opponents caused a few raised eyebrows in court. You know what I said about Raymond's Magnum Opus? Well, those gals were full of it. In more ways than one.

Stephanie had a double-shot Latte, and the gorgeous sour-cherry-and-cream strudel. With cream. I had a single Earl Grey, and muttered to myself yet again about the sheer injustice of some with figures to die for (and she does, as does Grace) being able to eat such treats without effect, while I gain a kilo if I look at a lettuce leaf. There Is No Justice.

Then a nice, relaxing 4 hour drive home, avoiding the worst of the rush hour. Well, most of it. Driving at night beats the fog banks that I had to negotiate at 0630 that morning, anyway, much as having a tooth extracted beats having root canal therapy.

Now to put together a bio data pack, as I've been invited to join SAGE, Sex and Gender Education Australia. But not tonight. I'm shattered.

Candid Camera

Canberra has a reputation for being less than lively. Boring, in fact. Excessively so.

Here's something that happened at Fairbairn Airbase, part of Canberra Airport, that was nearly a bit too exciting. Note the typical laconic Aussie humour in the commentary from the control tower.



Oh, the title of this post? Those familiar with NATO codenames will recognise not just the aircraft, but the terrible pun....

Hat tip to Tex at Whacking Day. Even if he called it an Antonov.

Square Peg, Round Hole

I didn't want to continue with yet another post on TS issues. This blog is intended to be a pot-pourri of issues, those of Science, and Space, and Sotware, and Serendipity. Brains too, of course.

I just read the full text of the paper I mentioned in the previous post. It's one of the benefits of being at a University, access to periodicals and journals through the library, and study of issues outside your particular speciality is encouraged. That's what Universities are all about, or they should be: they're not just glorified technical colleges.

I won't give a full analysis of the paper. It's well-written, definitely Good and not Junk science. The methodology is sound, as far as it goes, and the imperfections in the technique not plastered over, but there for all to see. It's what every scientific paper should be.

It takes as an axiom, an unspoken assumption, that all the people being studied are girls. Those men who are in the process of transition are referred to not as men, but as "girls with gender dysphoria". This assumption is questionable, and in one case, one of the study group that was "cured", is, I think, provably incorrect.

Four of the group of 25 were physically and unquestionably Intersexed. Their chromosomal sex wasn't reported, it wasn't regarded as important enough to mention, though easily capable of being measured.

Well, perhaps that's understandable. This is of course about Gender Identity, not extraneous detail that can be difficult to quantify. Except that more than half of the report is on sexual preference, something that is even more irrelevant to Gender than chromosomes, and notoriously difficult to nail down in transsexual people, whose orientation can change at transition.

One case though, we can be certain of. The one with "micropenis of indetermined cause". He has male chromosomes. He has to, or we'd know the cause.

Here's one view. There's considerable "reading between the lines" and interpolation from other evidence, but this is what the evidence strongly suggests may have happened.

Once there was a little boy. Now this little boy had an unfortunate medical condition. His penis was judged by those who had power over him to be too small. Boys in this parlous situation can still be fathers (though it takes technical help), and still derive normal sexual enjoyment. Anyone who thinks that the use of genitals are the only way to please a partner during sex really needs to do some study on the subject.

More unfortunate for him was that those who advised his concerned parents had strong views on this state of affairs. Feminists who believe in the concept of a Monolithic Patriarchy would suspect the advisors were all male. I'd go along with them in this case, not necessarily for the same reasons. We can't tell though. The report doesn't say.

It's likely that the advisors had heard all about the difficulties Intersexed people have at school. The persecution, the bullying. How locker-rooms would be nightmarish places to be avoided at all costs. I had a mild case, and I made sure I was alone when I took a shower after gym. It's not good even now, and at the time we're talking about for this boy, it was worse.

So it was decided to rear this boy as a girl. Now my own studies have shown that sometimes this will turn out well. A substantial proportion of people are just not strongly gendered either way, and could function as either. Not always though, and not even usually. You may hit the jackpot, and get someone who is transsexual anyway, and for them it would be perfect - but that's 1 in 3000. The trouble is, Surgical reassignment to a gender that is intolerable, the wrong gender, is a distinct possibility, and will result in Gender Dysphoria. In severe cases, this will be obvious at a young age, as it is with children born strongly neurologically cross-gendered, "primary transsexuals".

They castrated him.

They do that, you know, routinely to Intersexed kids. 5 times every day, an Intersexed baby is "normalised" by involuntary surgery, one way or another, in North America. There's a US-sponsored special exception to International Covenants against genital mutilation, just for them.

They removed any chance of fatherhood. Sterilised him. Made any hope of having an approximately normal life as a man remote, too. Not zero, for transsexual men do manage it, if they're strong enough. But what would have been easy and natural became vastly more difficult and complex. And they crossed their fingers that his brain was plastic enough to cope. Theory said it should be, no matter how many cases there were that it wasn't, not always.

This boy hadn't read the Theory. He wanted to play with the other boys. Gradually it would have dawned on his horrified parents that this wasn't just "tomboy" behaviour, but that their little girl (as they had to think of him for their own sanity) had a Problem.

So they probably took him to the Clarke Institute, in all probability the same people who had "helped" them before. What else could they do? Again, from memory the report doesn't say where he was taken, just that he had the Zucker Treatment.

So his pencil box had all the olive drab colours removed so he couldn't draw tanks, soldiers and aircraft. Instead, it was pink and purple pastels only. Playing with boys was forbidden, and it had to be Barbie not GI Joe in his toybox. Perhaps, as in many other cases, he hid his toy truck under his pillow, until that too was taken.

The previous post shows the kind of thing that happens. There's another post too, one I did earlier, showing the extremes in those days. I have no evidence whatsoever that the Clarke Institute engaged in this, I must emphasise. But I don't have any evidence that it was the Clarke Institute that gave the treatment, that's not mentioned in the report either. I'll quote from my earlier article, from this time last year:

Parents who brought their children to Rekers had to agree to participate in the "curing" of them. "Kraig," a four-year-old who participated in the UCLA Feminine Boy Project, was also monitored in the clinic's play-observation room. Only this time, it was his mother who wore the bug-in-the-ear, listening for her behavioral cues from the folks behind the wall. While playing, "Kraig would have seen her suddenly jerk upright, and look away from him toward the one-way window," Burke reports (based on transcripts of his case):

His mother was being prompted, through the earphones, by the doctor. She was told to completely ignore him, because he was engaged in feminine play. Kraig would have no understanding of what was happening to his mother. On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him, but she just looked away. She must have seemed like a stranger to have changed her behavior toward him so suddenly and for no apparent reason . . . He was described as being in a panic, alternating between sobs and "aggressing at her," but again, when his distraught mother finally looked at him and began to respond, she stopped mid-sentence and abruptly turned away, as if he were not there. Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.

Kraig's treatment continued in this vein. He was also put on the "token system" at home. Inappropriate, feminine behaviors earned him a red token, masculine ones, a blue token. Each red token earned him a spanking from his father. After more than two years of treatment, Kraig's behavior had turned around. He was now described by his mother as a "rough neck," and he no longer cared if his hair was neat or his clothes matched. But when he was eighteen, after years of being held up (under a pseudonym) by Rekers as "the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy," Kraig attempted suicide, because he thought that he might be gay.

The gender is opposite, but the story's the same.

After an unknown number of years of similar brainwashing, this boy-in-a-surgically-created-mostly-girl-body was pronounced "cured". Much to the relief of the parents, and the therapists, who might well have considered the consequences if he hadn't been.

Perhaps, and I would like to think this is true, Dr Zucker is correct. That despite all the counter-examples, despite the "gender dysphoria", this boy's brain was adequately malleable to make him into a successful woman. He's trumpeted as a success anyway, not at all gender dysphoric, no desire to change. And just as importantly (to them), Straight too, and not at all lesbian.

Failing that, I would like to think of him as cheerfully insane, much as I was. OK, that would mean being unable to access memories of childhood. For him, that would mean being unable to wear a man's shirt, or anything but the frilliest, most girly clothes he could get, just in case anyone suspected. Frigid, though yearning for love like anyone else, and capable of pleasing his male partner, who he loves dearly. The bit that says that this is all horribly, terribly wrong and perverse, safely locked away in a box in a safe in a room in a sunken ship under the ocean on a planet in a distant galaxy, so he almost never can hear the screaming in his head. No Gender Dysphoria, no siree, not for this guy, er, gal, the idea is absurd! Happy, for you can be in this situation. I know. I've been there. It's not that bad, really (so why are you crying, Zoe?). It doesn't feel bad at the time, anyway, that at least is unquestionably true. You can be highly functional, and no-one suspect, least of all you.

What I fear is that he might be on huge doses of anti-depressants, or alcoholic, or attempting to drown the misery in activities of one sort or another. Promiscuous sex perhaps, to validate his female identity. Suicidally Ideating perhaps. But again, no Gender Dysphoria, for if he showed that, the voices in his head tell him that no-one would love him. Her. Conforming, Bidable, and not standing out.

I don't know which of these is the case. It might be something else entirely. I don't know because it wasn't in the report. A study using basic tests for mental health would have told us about the last condition anyway, though the first two situations would have been indistinguishable.

But you see, compared to whether GD was still present or not, "happiness", "quality of life" or even basic mental health, wasn't considered important. Not worth measuring. And this is my main critique, why I'm inclined to take a very jaundiced view, not important even compared to sexual preference. It appears to be all about conformity.

Now remember just how much interpolation I'm doing. How much guesswork, lacking facts. Humans are good at seeing patterns that don't exist. I'm not objective either.

But it fits all too well. I hope I'm wrong, I hope my wild surmises and conjectures are nowhere near the actuality. I fear I'm right though. People like me are good at intuition. It also is consistent with every single one of the narratives I've heard from literally dozens of Intersexed people who went through the same kind of thing, and similar to the testimony of literally hundreds of TS people I've corresponded with.

I hope someone at Jurassic Clarke can show me that I'm utterly wrong, and it's vastly improbable that I have all the details right anyway. But I think, in the main, it's likely to be all too accurate.

I'm a boy, I'm a boy, but my Ma won't admit it
I'm a boy, I'm a boy, but if I say I am I get it.
Peter Townsend

Mommy, don't take me there!

This one is difficult to write. I won't pretend to be properly objective as a scientist should be. I have a little boy, the same age as the child being discussed, and more than a Rocket Scientist, I'm a parent. This hits me where I live.

I refer to NPR's story, Two Families. It's about two very different approaches to the same vexed issue, one of them favoured by Kenneth Zucker, who I've mentioned in a previous post.

Now would be a good time for anyone with an ounce of humanity to grab their blood pressure medication, and a handkerchief.

First, a whole bunch of disclaimers, why my subjective assessment should be taken with the appropriate amounts of NaCl.

• There's the problem of Projection. How do I know that what I felt 45 years or so ago is what this child is feeling? Every case is different.
• I know Dr Zucker is acting out of the highest motives, and has far more knowledge than I do.
• I know the parents are doing the responsible thing, getting the best professional advice, and sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind.
• I of all people should know the price to be paid, the surgery, the sterility. Had my metabolism not gone weird, I wouldn't have put myself through it
• As a right-winger, I consider NPR to be only slightly more reliable than Baghdad Bob. We're not getting the whole story, only carefully selected parts that fit the predetermined narrative.
• The tears streaming down my face and onto the keyboard show my own objectivity is hopelessly compromised, so be careful of any editorialising I might do.

Now onto the story... you can listen to it here.

It does seem to be the case that, at least in the short term, Carol's son Bradley is struggling in some ways with Zucker's therapy. Carol says it was particularly hard at the beginning.

"He was much more emotional. ... He could be very clingy. He didn't want to go to school anymore," she says. "Just the smallest thing could, you know, send him into a major crying fit. And ... he seemed to feel really heavy and really emotional."

Bradley has been in therapy now for eight months, and Carol says still, on the rare occasions when she cannot avoid having him exposed to girl toys, like when they visit family, it doesn't go well.

"It's really hard for him. He'll disappear and close a door, and we'll find him playing with dolls and Polly Pockets and ... the stuff that he's drawn to," she says.

In particular, there is one typically girl thing — now banned — that her son absolutely cannot resist.

"He really struggles with the color pink. He really struggles with the color pink. He can't even really look at pink," Carol says. "He's like an addict. He's like, 'Mommy, don't take me there! Close my eyes! Cover my eyes! I can't see that stuff; it's all pink!' "

Still, Carol says, Bradley has made some progress. Today, he is able to play with boys. He has a few male friends, and has said that he now enjoys boy things. And there are other signs of change.

"I mean, he tells us now that he doesn't dream anymore that he's a girl. So, we're happy with that. He's still a bit defensive if we ask him, 'Do you want to be a girl?' He's like 'No, NO! I'm happy being a boy. ...' He gives us that sort of stock answer. ... I still think we're at the stage where he feels he's leading a double life," she says. "... I'm still quite certain that he is with the girls all the time at school, and so he knows to behave one way at school, and then when he comes home, there's a different set of expectations."

'Mommy, don't take me there! Close my eyes! Cover my eyes!

She's trying to be a good girl - or rather, a good boy.

I know I'm not objective, but how can anyone do something like this to a child, regardless of circumstances?

I confess I am too emotionally disturbed by this, too many really bad memories to be objective about it.

If I didn't know any better, I'd call this torture, child abuse, that will likely instill all sorts of nasty little neuroses in later life.

In my own situation, I can blame neither parents, nor therapists. I hid it from the first, and the second didn't exist back then. I did it to myself, unable to wear even the palest of pastel shirts because "boys didn't do that". I was investing so very much of my psychic energy into trying to be a boy because I looked like one. I tried to be good.

For forty-seven years.

I don't want other kids to be put through that.

In a follow up Q&A session Dr Zucker explains himself.

I've seen many kids over the years present with all the indicators of GID, and in terms of my quantitative measures they're very extreme. But the follow-up studies I've done, and others too, show [that] a substantial majority of kids seen for GID in childhood show desistance — that is, when they're older they don't want to be the other sex. We just published a study of 25 girls we first saw in childhood and found that only 12 percent seem to have persistent gender dysphoria when they're older. We find similar rates of persistence in boys.

The study is A follow-up study of girls with gender identity disorder. Drummond KD, Bradley SJ, Peterson-Badali M, Zucker KJ. Dev Psychol. 2008 Jan;44(1):34-45. From the abstract:

At the assessment in childhood, 60% of the girls met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for GID, and 40% were subthreshold for the diagnosis.

So not 25, but 15 were diagnosed with definite GID. The study goes on to say that most of those who didn't remain Gender Dysphoric ended up as Butch Lesbians or completely asexual. And 20% went through Room 101 for nothing. Some of the cases were only 15 years old at follow up, with mean age 23.4 years, younger than many, perhaps even most, transmen transition, usually after living as Butch lesbians for years.

As his pile of toys dwindled, Carol realized Bradley was hoarding. She would find female action figures stashed between couch pillows. Rainbow unicorns were hidden in the back of Bradley's closet.

As opposed to a girl hiding her identity in a secret place in her mind.

Zucker's therapy sometimes works. But he's not just guilding the lilly with his claims, he's making 24ct gold statuettes. It's all about politics you see.

The therapists supporting a child's transition early, I have characterized them in a half serious way as liberal essentialists. On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity. But I think the hidden assumption is that they believe the child's cross-gender identity is entirely caused by biological factors. That's why I call them essentialists. Liberals have always been critical of biological reductionism, but here they embrace it. I think that conceptual approach is astonishingly naive and simplistic, and I think it's wrong.

Well, I'm no liberal, Dr Zucker. I plead guilty to humanistic, accepting and tolerant of diversity though, as I see those as being more characteristic of the Right than the Left in practice, even if we don't say the Politically Correct things. We also have a greater commitment to evidence-based conclusions rather than things that are expedient to believe for our own comfort.

I don't claim that gender identity is entirely shaped solely by biological effects either. Torture, Rape, and other trauma can cause physical changes in the brain in some cases. The biology shapes the possible, and studies on Intersexed people who undergo a natural apparent sex change show there's a large group that can function well as either gender. Some people are just not strongly gendered either way.
I managed the Boy act for decades, after all. I was a tomboy, I liked the idea of being a boy. I just wasn't one. I had things nowhere near as bad as these children.

"Astonishingly naive and simplistic"? Not compared to ignoring the neurological evidence in favour of dusty old Freudian theory, and ideas that conformity to an average is a Good in its own right.

The American Psychological Association (APA) passed a resolution back in 1997 condemning "reparative therapy" .

Supporters of the resolution, which passed the APA Council overwhelmingly by a voice vote, believed that it was critical for the Association to make such a statement due to the questions of the ethics, efficacy and benefits of conversion therapy which are now being debated within the profession and within society as a whole.

The context was that of attempting to change sexual orientation in consenting adults. But it seems that when it comes to gender identity, and small children, the same techniques are quite permissible, despite even more questions about the dubious ethics, efficacy, and benefit.

What questions? Children saying 'Mommy, don't take me there! Close my eyes! Cover my eyes! for example. It all comes down to that. As a Scientist, I must take into account the evidence, the numbers. As a mother parent, those words weigh even more heavily in my decisions. Torturing children is wrong, even if, especially if, it's "for the good of society" or a political or moral principle. Such a society, such a political ideal, such a system of morality, is wrong and does not deserve to exist.

I remind everyone that Dr Zucker now chairs the APA's Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group.

Transsexual Causation, the American Psychiatric Association, and Interpol

A sweeping from the dustbin of history, an extract from History: Interpol and the Nazi Party:

When Interpol was 1st established in 1924, Vienna was chosen as its "permanent" home by fixing in the constitution that the head of the Austrian federal police would automatically lead the organization from the capital of that nation.
...
Undaunted by growing Nazi participation, U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings recommended to the Congress, a mere 2 weeks after Hitler's take-over of Austria and Interpol, that the U.S. formally join the group "as advocated by Director Hoover." Since Secretary of State Cordell Hull had no objection to the membership "from the point of view of our international relations," Congress voted the money and as of June 8, 1938, the U.S. was officially a member of Interpol. The U.S. was a member of a Nazi-run organization for only $1,500 annual dues.
...
Reinhard Heydrich, appointed to head the Nazi SS, became Interpol's new president, announcing that "Under its new German leadership [Interpol will] be a real center of criminal police." On December 8, 1941, Berlin was named as Interpol's new home and the move was made. Sharing a villa in Wannsee, a wealthy suburb of Berlin, with the Gestapo, Interpol was placed under Heydrich's Sicherheitdienst (SD) or Security Police.

Why have I been reminded of this recently? What faint echoes are there of an organisation with worthy aims shall we say, "misdirected" by a "fringe" group that is no doubt concerned with the issues at hand, but rather better known for other, more questionable activities? Read on, all will become clear. It's only a faint echo, and those involved aren't monsters. Just... "fringe".

But first, a talk about Transsexuality, and the causation thereof. I was recently asked what non-Freudian based theory there was about the cause of transsexuality. here's what I replied. My apologies for being repetitious in parts, but there's some novel stuff too.

The brain is a sexually dimorphic organ. The brains of men and women differ. Now just as there are flat-chested women and gynacamastic men, there's overlap, and different parts of the brain may be more or less conformal to the typically male or typically female pattern.

All sexually dimorphic organs are subject to cross-gendering, "Intersex", where a body that is mostly of one pattern can have bits more typical of the other. See any good site on Intersex to show the hundreds of different syndromes and how things can go wrong. Sometimes it's due to chromosomal causes, where the chromosomes aren't all 46xx(F) or 46xy(M), but 47xxy, or 45x, or a mixture such as 46xx/47xxy.
Sometimes it's due to other genetic causes, as when the cells aren't sensitive to the male sex hormone testosterone, so the body develops as mainly female, regardless of chromosomes. Often it's due to non-genetic causes, usually hormonal abnormalities in the womb, and sometimes it just happens for causes unknown, like many other congenital conditions.

Now since all other sexually dimorphic organs are subject to Intersex, how come the brain is uniquely immune? Or is it? In fact, there's evidence that it isn't.

Zhou J.-N, Hofman M.A, Gooren L.J, Swaab D.F (1997)
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality.
(PDF at http://www.harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org/pdf/BSTc.pdf)

Kruijver F.P.M, Zhou J.-N, Pool C.W., Swaab D.F. (2000)
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic
Nucleus (PDF at http://www.harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org/pdf/brainsex1.pdf)

Male and Female brains differ, both on the coarse scale (BSTc layer of the hypothalamus) and fine scale (number of neurons - brain cells - in each structure). Autopsies on transsexual women, that is, women with mostly male bodies, have shown they have female pattern brains in this respect.

Note that gay men have male pattern brains though in this respect.

The brain is a complex organ, with many different parts. It's entirely possible, even usual, to have some parts more typically feminine, and other parts more typically masculine. What really matters is what parts are what, and to what degree.

Now if this is true, then we should expect to see the differences showing up in fMRI images - "brain scans" of living people. And we do.

From ArzteZeitung, 2007

"Radiologists can now confirm what transsexuals report - that they feel “trapped in the wrong body” - on the basis of the activation of the brain when presented with erotic stimuli. There is obviously a biological correlation with the subjective feelings."

This experiment took a number of men, a number of women, and an equal number of TS women. The TS women had the same pattern of neural activity in the lymbic nucleus (part of the brain) that the other women did .

So it's all nice and neat, everything proven beyond any doubt, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, the numbers in the experiments are too small for comfort. We still don't know which parts of the brain are responsible for gender identity, though we have a good idea now. The BSTc differences between men and women only happen at puberty, yet we know gender identity is formed before then. That means the BSTc difference is a symptom, not a cause. Moreover, the brains of infants are "undifferentiated pudding", lots of neurons but few connections. In theory, there's no difference, so we should be able to grow up either way, depending on environment. Except it doesn't work that way, differences between boys and girls are measureable at 18 months in terms of attention-span and reaction to basic stimuli. We don't know why, but we can deduce that there's something going on that we haven't detected yet.

We know from the cases of surgical intervention on Intersexed infants to "normalise" them that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, so we sometimes get surgically-created transsexuals (see the infamous David Reimer case). We also know that those mothers who took the drug DES in the first trimester and have genetically male children give birth to transsexual girl babies 500 times more often than they should by random chance. If the brains of newborn infants were as plastic as psychologists theories would indicate, this would not happen. (Even the non-TS "DES sons" are usually Intersexed in other ways too BTW)

We know that those Intersexed genetic males with 5ARD or 17BHDD, so they get a "natural apparent sex change" from FtoM at puberty can be divided into three groups: those to whom it is a massive relief from transsexuality, those to whom it's just something that happens and they don't really care, and those to whom it's a nightmare, a descent into transsexuality. It appears that the three groups might broadly be the same size, but we don't know, there's too little data to be sure. We know all three groups exist, that's all.

As for the German experiment - they only looked at straight men and straight women, and it could be that they haven't found a biological basis for TS, just for sexual orientation. They didn't state whether any of the TS sample were lesbian or not. We do know that the differences detectable at autopsy aren't due to hormone treatment, as they also autopsied a number of men taking similar hormones (greater doses usually) to combat cancer, and their masculine brains were unaffected.

So all we can say is that it is "true on the balance of probabilities" rather than "proven beyond reasonable doubt". And only that assuming there isn't some more compelling evidence for another theory.

There's a lot of evidence that TS women can be divided broadly into two groups. Those that transition early, and those that transition late. The ones that transition early tend to be androphillic (attracted to men), and to have bodies that are gracile, easily transformed by hormones into pretty girls. They tend to have difficulty "passing" as boys from an early age.

The ones that transition late may be andro or gynephillic (attracted to men, women, or either), and are less gracile, and have no difficulty "passing" as men. They even sometimes have difficulty "passing" as women after treatment, and this appears independant of physical appearance, more a matter of body language and instinctive behaviour than anything else. They also tend to be good at engineering and science, with both the linear/analytic/deductive male-typical thinking and parallel/creative/intuitive female-typical thinking modes available to them. TS men follow the same broad categories (swapping boys for girls, and andro- for gynaphillia), but with one exception: they all tend to transition early.

The Neurological theory accounts for this as follows: basically, different parts of the brain are affected, and societal pressures account for the rest.

For example, until the mid 1990s, it was impossible for most TS women who were lesbian to obtain medical help in transition. It was also impossible for anyone not gracile and able to look pretty in a conventional sense. Such women were denied treatment as being "poor candidates". They transitioned as soon as they could.
In the late 50's, 60's and early 70's, there was no Internet, and no access to the data about transition we have today. Moreover, Homosexuality was punishable in many jurisdictions by prison terms of 10 years or more. The "Gay Underground" had access to data about transsexual transition, but those who had no "in" with that shadowy, furtive and underground culture (as it was then) because they didn't think of themselves as gay, had no idea that transition even existed, except as something a few freaks did at a cost of half a million dollars in today's terms in foreign locations.

Those who could do "the boy act" with some success did so, as it was their only means of survival. Those who could not mainly died, with only a handful of survivors who managed to transition despite the difficulties still alive today. Those whose neurology was less affected, so they had masculine or masculinised instincts regarding body language and mannerisms were able to cope, especially if they had typically masculine bodies. Their first opportunity to transition started less than 15 years ago. Because of their mixed neurology, they tend to be in Computer Science, the technically creative arts, the Military, or other areas where both creativity and logic are required. Many Intersexed people are the same in that area.

Now the main competing theory is AGP (AutoGynePhilia) theory, a theory based in the Freudian concept that every single human motivation is sexual in nature. In AGP theory, the early transitioners are really gay boys who want to have sex with straight men. The late transitioners have a paraphilia, a fetish, that makes them want to have female bodies based on misdirected male sexual urges (Autogynephilia). This last is associated with talents for the military, computer science, or the creative arts for reasons unknown, and the neurological evidence is swept under the carpet as an irrelevant, unexplained phenomenon based on dubious evidence. As for FtoMs, they're all inexplicable and may not even exist. Any testimony by any TS women which contradicts this is a lie, and they must all be pathological liars as so many of them contradict it.

All men are heterosexual, gay, or liars too, bisexuality doesn't exist in men, those who say they're bisexual are gay. Except in transsexuals, where those claiming to be bisexual have to actually be non-gay to make it all work. And women are all bisexual. The evidence that many late transitioning women end up being androphillic is ignored as an unexplained phenomenon, or maybe they're just lying.

If we're not careful, that last is going to be enshrined as the official position of the American Psychiatric Association.

Why do I say this? Well, the American Psychiatric Association is revising their Diagnostic Standard Manual, the DSM, from version 4 to version 5 - DSM-IV to DSM-V. This will list all the various psychiatric disorders so far identified, how to diagnose them and differentiate them from other similar disorders. This manual is something of a "Shrink's Bible", used worldwide, not just in the USA. It is capital-A Authoritative.

From a recent news release of the APA, announcing the makeup of the panel revising the DSM in the area of sexual disorders:

Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group

Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D. (Chair) Head, Gender Identity Service Clinic, Child, Youth, and Family Program Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Irving M. Binik, Ph.D. Professor Department of Psychology McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Ray Blanchard, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychiatry University of Toronto Head of Clinical Sexology Services Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, Ph.D. Head of the Department of Medical Psychology VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Jack Drescher, M.D. Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, New York Medical College Associate Attending Psychiatrist, St. Luke'sRoosevelt Hospital Center New York, NY

Cynthia Graham, Ph.D. Research Tutor Oxford Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology Isis Education Centre Warneford Hospital Headington, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Richard B. Krueger, M.D. Medical Director, Sexual Behavior Clinic Department of Psychiatry New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University New York, NY

Niklas Långström, M.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor Centre for Violence Prevention Karolinska Institutet Stockholm, Sweden

Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, Dr. rer. nat. Professor of Clinical Psychology Department of Psychiatry College of Physicians & Surgeons Columbia University New York, NY

Robert Taylor Segraves, M.D., Ph.D. Chairperson Department of Psychiatry MetroHealth Medical Center Cleveland, OH

One thing stands out: both the head and one of the panellists hail from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada. This was formerly known as the "Clarke Institute", and by it's detractors, "Jurassic Clarke". It, and its staff, are "controversial" to say the least. Many in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH - formerly HBIGDA) would describe them as "fringe". This is the only institute that has two members on the panel.

Dr. Ray Blanchard resigned from the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) in protest to the ethics investigation of his protégé, J. Michael Bailey. Blanchard, a psychiatrist, member of a eugenics think tank, and vocal proponent of repathologizing homosexuality as a mental illness, still runs Toronto’s Clarke Institute as a maximum security processing facility, using the same procedures, locked rooms and shared space areas for pedophiles, rapists, homosexuals, and transsexuals.

From Rodkin D. Sex and Transsexuals. Chicago Reader December 12, 2003, a quote which shows the importance of the DSM even outside the USA:

Blanchard, who happens to be an American citizen, says a DSM listing has different implications in Canada than in the U.S. "This question of whether autogynephilia should be listed as a disorder is strictly an American preoccupation," he says. "In the U.S. there is no universal health insurance plan, so people will pay for their SRS out of their own pocket. But in most of the Western world, where there is government-run health insurance, in order for their sex reassignment to be paid for, it has to be a disorder, it has to be in the DSM. Health plans don't pay for surgery that is elective. They pay for surgery that is medically necessary."

Thereby completely missing the point: broken legs are not in the DSM. Surgically correctable congenital conditions are not in the DSM. If Transsexuality, like Intersex, is a biological condition, it belongs with the other biological disorders, not the psychiatric ones. The disabling distress, the GD or "Gender Dysphoria" caused by lack of treatment for the condition does though, so his job is safe, especially in determining what degree of surgical, hormonal, and supportive treatment is required to deal with the psychic damage caused by the distress. The "resultant co-morbidities" of being driven insane by decades of psychic torment.

He points out that from 1970 to '99 the Ontario Health Insurance Plan covered sex-reassignment surgery for patients who'd been approved for it by the Clarke Institute. But the conservative government that came to power in 1999 stopped paying for it. "Now a group of transsexuals have brought a human rights complaint against removal of sex-reassignment surgery as a benefit," he says. "Their argument is that this is a recognized treatment for a psychiatric disorder. It's got to remain in the DSM. The DSM has no formal jurisdiction in Canada, but in fact it's taken as the standard."

Note "autogynephilia" not "transsexuality" or "gender dysphoria". As was said at the rather polemical transgender roadmap:

Many are beginning to question whether these diagnoses are really necessary in order to receive health services. Many are even questioning whether these are diseases at all. Because Blanchard and several cronies are heavily involved in the DSM's language about these "disorders," it is likely that we will see a pitched battle about this matter when the next DSM revision is made.

Indeed, a prediction that has come to pass. And it appears they've won.

The Chair, Kenneth Zucker is best known for his "Reparative Therapy" to "cure" gender-variant children. here, I'll quote what was said about him by one of his admirers:

Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual.
...
First, he thinks that family dynamics play a large role in childhood GID (Gender Identity Disorder)—not necessarily in the origins of cross-gendered behavior, but in their persistence.
...
So the first prong of Zucker’s approach is family therapy.
...
The second prong is therapy for the boy, to help him adjust to the idea that he cannot become a girl, and to help teach him how to minimize social ostracism. Zucker does not teach boys how to walk in a manly fashion, but he does give them feedback about the likely consequences of taking a doll to school.
...
The third prong is key. Zucker says simply: “The Barbies have to go.” He has nothing against Barbie dolls, of course. He means something more general. Feminine toys and accoutrements—including Barbie dolls, girls’ shoes, dresses, purses, and princess gowns—are no longer to be tolerated at home, much less bought for the child.
...
Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome. ... Why put boys at risk for this when they can become gay men happy to be men?

Better a normal, effeminate gay boy than an icky girl! And it's all the parents' fault too. Gender Variant Kids should be terrorised into conformity.

Those quotes are from Michael Bailey, by the way, the one who so famously said that young, pretty transsexual women are "peculiarly fitted to be prostitutes" due to their sexual appetities, (which of course are entirely absent in "real women" as everyone knows). *SIGH*

Jack Drescher, also on the panel, is best known for his labelling of Reparative Therapy of the kind advocated by Zucker as Junk Science practiced only by Quacks. It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to predict Fireworks.

Ray Blanchard I've already dealt with, but I must say a number of things to complete the picture. He's a giant in his field, he's done some excellent research and data gathering. It's only his conclusions, ones forced on him by his early training as a Freudian psych unaware of such new-fangled notions as MRI imaging, brain lesions causing psychiatric illnesses and the like that make him "beyond the fringe".

Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis is a specialist on Neuroanatomy, and the difference between male and female brains, including transsexuals.

Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg is an endocrinological specialist, who knows a lot about the role of pre-natal hormones on gender development, and is the only one who has knowledge about Intersex conditions.

Of the rest, none have any specialised knowledge about Gender.

Niklas Långström specialises in violent male sex offenders
Irving M Binik specialises in female orgasmic disorders
Robert Taylor Segraves specialises in sexual dysfunctions, impotence etc
Cynthia Graham specialises in sex therapy with respect to contraceptive use
Richard B. Krueger again specialises in sex offenders

Now Ray Blanchard, despite his unique views that all transsexuals, without exception, are gay boys or perverts, does not believe that sex reassignment should be denied them, and he believes this on strictly humanitarian grounds. He doesn't see that others in the legal and political areas, those who pass laws about this, just might not agree with his highly principled stance.

Others do though. The ones who have suffered as the result. They tend to think the worst, and are seldom disappointed. I'll quote from Organisation Intersex International. I apologise for the alphabet-soup of acronyms, they're a hazard of the profession when dealing with Intersex issues.
DSD - disorders of sexual development (Intersex by any other name)
NC-CAH NonClassical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (what I'm being treated for)
17 Beta HSD 3 - 17BHDD, a cellular hormonal conversion problem leading to feminisation at birth, and masculinisation later. Similar to 5ARDS, 5 alpha reductase dediciency syndrome :

Next, I would think that they would classify the syndromes which they have been studying and have been frustrated about the most lately, and those are the 3 in which patients are MOST likely (more than surgeons) to request a reassignment. These categories are 5 alpha reductase 2 deficiency, NC-CAH, and 17 Beta HSD 3. There have already been studies on 5 alpha in transsexuals which found that M to F's don't have 5 alpha. Thus, those who wish to reject a male assignment will be labeled as paraphilic, and those who want to live as males will make this appear more justifiable, plus this will fuel their desire against feminizing surgeries Those who virilize at puberty and insist on masculinizing surgeries will be those whom they will seek to find grant money for in order to investigate if autoandrophilia (the counterpart in “females” of autogynephilia) exists. Then, because they have found such a high incidence of NC-CAH in F to M transsexuals, they will likely claim that CAH is similar to F to M transsexualism. Those who wish to live as males will continue to pull in more grant money because they will be more than tomboys: they will be autoandrophilics. Homosexuals would be the only other category.

Here is the progression I see in how DSD is important in reframing intersex as a sexual fetish (or paraphilia).

A) M to F TRANSSEXUALS will be the first to be classified as paraphilic. Then-

B) "DSD persons" who would not have been called intersex under the LESS inclusive category of intersex, if they reject their gender assignment, will be labeled as paraphilic. Then-

C) the conditions which PATIENT initiated gender re-assignment is requested (most common in 5 alpha, CAH, and 17 Beta) will be classified as paraphilic. Then-

D) Autoandrophilia will be created for female to male transsexuals.

E) people who were always considered intersexed, who reject their assignment, will be labeled as paraphilic.
...
The problem is not autogynephilia per se. It is the conflation of intersex issues (or people with DSD’s) with something unrelated to why many people with intersex variations reject their gender assignment which is problematic.

We in the intersexed and trans community risk ending up in a situation where:

Surgeons who perform intersex normalization surgeries without the consent of the child will always be right.
Surgeons who offer sex reassignment surgeries to adults with informed consent will always be wrong.

Many stakeholders involved in intersex treatment benefit from this, especially the surgeons and pediatric endocrinologists. Unfortunately, the main victims are the intersexed children themselves.

And that is why both Intersex and Transsexual groups are up in arms about this. The more scientifically literate, and that is a very high percentage, because of the "junk science" that will likely lead to greater persecution. The rest because of the insult such views offer us, to be mischaracterised and misrepresented in such a blatant way, our honest narratives dismissed as lies by lunatics.

Should this state of affairs be allowed to continue, should the fringe views of a few paleolithic neo-Freudians be adopted as Gospel, then an avalanche of discriminatory regulation will likely ensue. The long-standing rights to correct birth certificates, to marry in the correct gender, even to work near children, will likely be withdrawn. After all, we'll be officially "self-mutilating male perverts or gays" according to the APA, no matter what the specialists in the area might say.

Now you know why I'm reminded of those far off days in the 1930's. The echoes are faint, the people involved all well-meaning, but the consequences for people like me could be catastrophic.

Truth, Fiction, and Spiders

From the Daily Mail in the UK :

British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives.

Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby.

Now some panels from e-sheep's graphic multimedia novel, "Spiders", from 2001.






Now see this VoxPop page from 2002 in a universe next door...

Calico Cats and Kleinfelters

From Genome News Network.

As for the male calico in question, Gould had to look to the X chromosome, where the cat's gene for coat color resides. A cat, she tells us, can have either the "O" gene, for orange, or the "o" gene for black (or, strictly speaking, non-orange). Orange in this case is only partially dominant over non-orange, and a hybrid, "Oo," has a coat with a little bit of orange, a little black—in other words, calico. And since the color gene is on the X chromosome, you can't have a male hybrid, any more than you can have a male carrier of sex-linked diseases like hemophilia, because males have only a single X.

Except, that is, for cats like George. George, it turns out, has the feline version of Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic anomaly that strikes an estimated one in 500 baby boys and is caused by trisomy of the sex chromosomes, leading to the genotype XXY. Although the Y chromosome makes George male, that extra X gives him as many loci as a female would have for the coat color gene. This means he can indeed be a color hybrid, with "O" on one of his X chromosomes and "o" on the other. To someone in the know—as readers of this book are by now—George's calico coat announces his hybrid status, and his hybrid status announces that he must have at least one more X than does a typical male.

One less obvious fact about George, however, is that he isn't a straight XXY. His true karyotype is XXY/XY, which makes him a genetic mosaic. Klinefelter himself documented dozens of such mosaics, in whom not every cell contained exactly the same arrangement of chromosomes. Among them were such bizarre combinations as XXY/XXXY, XXXY/XXXXY, XX/XXXY/XXY, and X0/XY/XXY. In George's case, only half his cells are the standard Klinefelter XXY. The other half, it turns out, are just ordinary male XY.

"So George isn't a new and wonderful type," his indulgent owner concludes. "He's just another boring old XY/XXY, five of which have already been reported in the literature."

I'm not Kleinfelter - though that was considered a distinct possibility at one stage, specifically a X0/XY/XXY mosaic - but I hang around with some who are. Most are guys with a minor anomaly. A few are girls with a somewhat greater anomaly. Usually. The medical literature records a few who have given birth.

One of the girls, Ms Y, is currently in Montreal, Quebec, getting her last somatic ambiguity resolved. Her surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. I wish her and her partner (the fabulous Ms X) all the very best.

I've only met them twice, once at Chonburi, where some corrective surgery was performed on Ms Y when I was getting my surgical revision done. And once on the way back from Montreal in late February. But I've known them for years over the Internet.

I won't mention their names, nor even their initials. You see, when their situation was made known in the place they used to live, the locals disapproved. Having narrowly escaped an attempted firebombing of their house, they moved elsewhere, and are now "stealth", just a normal, average, lesbian couple. It's safer that way.

Many of the GLB set where they live now wouldn't approve, you see.

For that matter, what can the labels "heterosexual" or "homosexual" mean when someone is 47xxy? Neither 46xx (genetically female) nor 46xy (genetically male)? But anyone who's ever met Ms Y could have no doubt of her gender. She's stunning, and Ms X gives her competition there too. They are, in every sense of the word, beautiful women. Just two of the outstanding people on this planet who I never would have met had it not been for my metabolic whoopsie.

It was a Gift, and not just because of the relief that things finally felt right.

Year Three

Year One and Year Two are described in previous posts.



It's been exactly three years since my unusual transition started. My initial faith that we'd figure out exactly what metabolic weirdness I have may not have been misplaced, but it's taking longer than I expected. Recent events, namely, the rapid masculinisation that I started having, may provide a clue.

Having both Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome - a tentative diagnosis I was first given 23 years ago - plus adrenal hyperplasia - might fit. One feminises a masculine base, the other masculinises a feminine base, to over-simplify. The treatment I'm having currently, one that seems to be working, is the same as for a standard model 46xx woman with Andrenal Hyperplasia.

Yes, normal testosterone (for a male) and I feminised: now low testosterone (even for a female) and I started masculinising.

Well, I did wonder what even more improbable thing could possibly happen to top the events of 2005.

By the way, the odds of having both conditions appear to be 169,000,000 to 1 against. So I rather think it's probably something else not identified yet, a mere 1 in 3 million or so "ideopathic" syndrome.

Again, a lot of posts to do with my transition, or where I illuminate a larger issue in terms of my own experiences, and how I feel about my transition.

http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/05/22-years-ago.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/05/dedicated.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/05/pain-in-hip-pocket-nerve.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/05/all-this-and-world-war-two.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/06/cosmos-15.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/06/fighting-good-fight-total-war.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/06/news-of-world.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/06/next-year-in-jerusalem.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/06/flavour-of-month.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/barabas-followers.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/for-exercise-for-exercise-for-exercise.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/from-ben-gurion.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/to-chonburi.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/good-news-from-thailand.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/doctorate-blues.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/gates-of-jerusalem.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/morning-after-night-before.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/dont-do-it-unless-you-have-to.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-passed-my-medical-exam.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/hate.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/chinese-temple-thailand.html
By the way - the girl in that picture is Lucy Parker, whose story appeared on BBC soon thereafter. A nice kid.
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/elephant-martial-arts.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/retribution.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogging-will-be-light.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/incident-at-motor-registry.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/passports-part-ii.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/passports-round-2-first-volley.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/passports-round-2-section-9.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/sex-and-mapi.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/08/cosmos-intersex-article-online.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/fathers-day.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/60-seconds-of-zoe.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/yet-another-part-of-puzzle.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-good-news.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/twenty-five-years-ago.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/passports-round-2-getting-legal.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/phantom-organs.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/venting.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/good-deed-for-today.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/two-hundred-thousand.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/outgoing-mail.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/phonecall-from-apo.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/10/so-much-for-stealth.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/11/blind-alley.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/11/opposite-direction.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/12/passports-last-battle.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/12/hate-life-universe-and-everything.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/12/phd-matters.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2007/12/todays-battle_30.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/legal-insanity.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/he-said-she-said.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/take-5.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/maple-leaf-rag.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/01/itinerary.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/02/winter-in-north-america-is-cold.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-we-fight.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/03/family.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/03/childhood-memories.html
http//aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/03/you-do-what-you-have-to-do.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/03/todays-battle_27.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/04/who-ordered-that.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-good-company.html
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/05/and-talking-about-ignorance-and-bigotry.html

Some of the connections with my transition get very tenuous, and that's only to be expected. It's just not that big a part of my life any more. In Year One, I changed my social role from male to female, and came to terms with the fact that that silly idea that I'd had since childhood, that if I wasn't female I certainly ought to have been, was correct. In Year Two I had genital reconstruction surgery, and also came to terms with the fact that I'm straight rather than lesbian. That was a big deal!

In Year Three... well, I had some complications from surgery fixed. And I got my passport, finally. Some even more weird hormonal stuff, now being successfully treated. A bit of an anti-climax, really.

I'm not done with transition, not quite. I still haven't had a hairdo, nor a manicure or makeover. There's the unfinished business to do with my Birth Certificate. I still have much to learn about being a woman, lots of fiddly details. But I have love, I have a family, the important things, and I'll get the rest attended to in good time.

I expect Year Four's list to be a great deal shorter. But you never know what's going to happen next, and I won't tempt Fate.

Three Years In, this is where I am. And it feels good.

Picture (C) 2008 ACP Publications and may not be copied without permission - license to me is for personal use only