Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono, is changing gender

quaere · June 14, 2009, 2:15am

claremarie, the third article you posted was very interesting. I also read the full-length feature on the same subject that appeared in the Guardian the next day. Here are a few things I noticed:

<ol>
<li>The authors of the study cited in the headline claimed that previous studies on the same topic had restricted sample sizes and poor methodologies, making their results misleading. They, in turn, provided no description of their sample size or methodology, making it impossible to review or fact-check their work. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been published anywhere. On the other hand, WPATH writes that “*n over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective”, and provides citations for these studies. ([page</a> 3](<a href=“http://www.wpath.org/documents/Med%20Nec%20on%202008%20Letterhead.pdf]page”>http://www.wpath.org/documents/Med%20Nec%20on%202008%20Letterhead.pdf)) While the Arif study only involved trans women and only examined the results of vaginoplasty (which is just one component in an extensive transition process), these reviews included trans women and men, and considered multiple aspects of transitioning. So I’m skeptical about one review that claims to invalidate all this research. Maybe you can link me to Arif’s actual data?</li>
<li>Like I said, I also read the full-length feature profiling trans women, and men who had previously identified as trans women, who regretted vaginoplasty. Oddly enough, the first person profiled in the article identified as a transsexual woman and didn’t regret vaginoplasty per se; her unhappiness was due to the decision to “de-transition” after joining an evangelical church, and it was that decision that had caused problems for her. Others in the article regretted poor medical and psychiatric care before and after surgery, withholding information from the therapists who referred them to surgeons, or isolating themselves from sources of support in the trans community. None of them suggest, and nothing in the article indicates, that there are not people who are really transsexual and genuinely do benefit from hormones and surgery. In fact, one of them was profiled in the article.</li>
</ol>

The point of the piece is not to demonstrate that gender dysphoria is a “delusion”, as you put it, or that trans people are mentally ill or frauds – but that sometimes there are problems in the ways it’s diagnosed and treated, especially when patients have other emotional or social problems. So, uh, when people are misdiagnosed while underlying issues go untreated, they come to regret it? That’s neither headline-worthy nor an argument “against” transsexuality.

I should add that when gender therapy is done right, it neither blindly acquiesces to a person’s desires, nor forces them into medical procedures that they don’t want. Therapists who’ve worked with many trans patients are more likely to know what signs to look for and what questions to ask, and to ensure meaningful support throughout the transition process. Unfortunately, some people can’t find a local, affordable therapist who’s experienced with trans issues, and some don’t feel that they can trust therapists enough to be fully honest in sessions. Not without reason – the mental health community has a history of perpetuating bizarre myths and profoundly messed-up standards regarding trans people, and many still view them as gatekeepers, not as allies.

The article also focuses on the health care system in the U.K., where the process of attaining surgery is AFAIK pretty different from in the U.S. You might be interested to read the [Standards</a> of Care](<a href=“http://wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf]Standards”>http://wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf) for the treatment of trans patients, which most therapists and surgeons here adhere to. As a prerequisite for top surgery, my surgeon required a letter from a therapist attesting that I’d been in therapy for a certain period of time (in my case, eleven months) and had lived full-time as a man for more than a year. The endocrinologist who prescribes my testosterone required a similar letter. Not that there aren’t problems with the SoC – they make the process of transitioning longer and more expensive, turn identities into diagnoses in a way that many trans people resent, and in some cases restrict treatment for people who really need it. But for all their faults, they do make it pretty damn hard to do anything irreversible unless you and your therapist are sure it’s the right choice at the right time.

So that’s my reaction – and again, I’d love to read that review if you have a link to it. I haven’t had a chance to read the other articles in detail, because I have to sleep at some point and it might as well be now…

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 2:18am

But I must say, this description fits me to a “T.” As those of you who’ve met me or seen my picture can surely see. Of course, I’m also Jewish, so I also have a gigantic hooked nose, long greasy black hair, and spend most of my time rubbing my hands together thinking of ways to cheat the goyim.

Both stereotypes are equally accurate.

Paul McHugh, the Vatican’s official advisor on sexuality, has been the Julius Streicher of organized transphobia for close to 40 years now. He’s the so-called expert who’s always available to supply a quote when a journalist decides that he or she needs to give “both sides.” Why McHugh? Because he’s the only supposedly reputable psychiatrist in the United States who actually believes this garbage anymore. The fact is, he probably hasn’t knowingly met or spoken to a transwoman since the early 1970’s. Even then, this gross, cruel stereotyping was an absurd lie; if you compare it to contemporary accounts, or actually knew trans women yourself back then, it’s very obvious. He had an agenda even back then; his goal was to shut down the Johns Hopkins gender clinic, and he “cooked the books” by coming up with studies to fit his pre-ordained conclusions. Regardless of what happened then, though, McHugh has been repeating his foul stereotypes ever since.

I’d like to think that McHugh’s bigotry is obvious from every contemptuous word he emits. And I’d equally like to think that my own words here, for a year before I disclosed my history and a couple of months since, consitute a sufficient response to the continual accusations that I’m delusional and mentally ill. You’ll have to decide yourself whether to believe me (who has met hundreds of trans women and trans men) or claremarie (who admitted once in another thread that she’s never met a trans person to her knowledge) about trans people in general.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 2:37am

Quaere, please don’t make the mistake of trying to have a dialogue with claremarie like you might with almost any other poster, or of asking her for further information about the sources she cites. She is incapable of actual dialogue because her ears are closed, and can’t supply further information because she doesn’t actually know anything. All she does, and all she can do, is cut and paste transphobic (or homophobic, or extremist anti-abortion) talking points from religious right blogs and websites.

It’s easy enough to find cogent critiques of that article/meta-study yourself.

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 9:11am

“Paul McHugh, the Vatican’s official advisor on sexuality, has been the Julius Streicher of organized transphobia for close to 40 years now. He’s the so-called expert who’s always available to supply a quote when a journalist decides that he or she needs to give “both sides.” Why McHugh? Because he’s the only supposedly reputable psychiatrist in the United States who actually believes this garbage anymore.”

Well, the National Academies don’t agree with your assessment. He was awarded the Sarnat prize in 2008.

“The Institute of Medicine (IOM) awarded the 2008 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health to Paul R. McHugh, the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine and professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.The Sarnat Prize, consisting of a medal and $20,000, was presented at IOM’s annual meeting.
“During his remarkable career, Paul McHugh has explored maladies ranging from depressive disorders to eating disorders, always providing new information to improve our understanding,” said Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine.“His contributions to the field of modern psychiatry are many and profound, and foremost among these may be his co-authorship of The Perspectives of Psychiatry, a text whose influence on the field can hardly be overstated.”
The Sarnat Prize was presented to McHugh in recognition of his seminal contributions to the field of psychiatry and his wide-ranging efforts to identify and treat various mental disorders.The Perspectives of Psychiatry, a treatise on practice methods and principles, has been lauded as one of the most influential psychiatry texts in the last century.By emphasizing the field’s unifying concepts while identifying the different ways psychiatrists can approach mental illness, the text has given practitioners insights into how they can better understand one another and communicate more effectively.In several other books, McHugh has explored some of the most strenuously debated topics in both society and psychiatry, including assisted suicide, recovered memories, alcoholism, and sexual disorders.He also is credited with building the psychiatry department at the Johns Hopkins University into an internationally recognized program in both research and clinical care during his tenure as director.
McHugh was among the first to describe increased cortisol secretion associated with depression, an accomplishment that led to the development of a test to identify serious depression by physical means.His extensive work studying the control of food intake revealed how gastrointestinal and neurophysiologic mechanisms regulate caloric intake in primates and are disrupted in people with eating disorders.
McHugh received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.He pursued further training at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s); Massachusetts General Hospital; University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry; and the division of neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
He has received many professional honors, including the Paul Hoch Award of the American Psychopathological Association, Joseph Zubin Award of the American Psychopathological Association, and the William C. Menninger Award from the American College of Physicians.He has been a visiting scholar of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1992.Currently serving on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the President’s Council on Bioethics, he also is an adviser to the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.He served for five years on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board for the protection of children and youth.
Since 1992, the Institute of Medicine has presented the Sarnat Prize to individuals, groups, or organizations that have demonstrated outstanding achievement in improving mental health.The prize recognizes — without regard for professional discipline or nationality — achievements in basic science, clinical application, and public policy that lead to progress in the understanding, etiology, prevention, treatment, or cure of mental disorders, or to the promotion of mental health.As defined by the nominating criteria, the field of mental health encompasses neuroscience, psychology, social work, nursing, psychiatry, and advocacy.”

[2008</a> Sarnat Prize Recipient: Paul R. McHugh - Institute of Medicine](<a href=“http://www.iom.edu/?id=59000]2008”>http://www.iom.edu/?id=59000)

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 11:33am

The fact that they would ignore his long history of transphobia and homophobia doesn’t surprise me in the least. As usual, you haven’t refuted a single thing I said. Because you can’t. Including the fact that McHugh has never disagreed with official Catholic Church doctrine in his life. And that he has had no experience with trans people in almost 40 years. (Which, by the way, means that he could not possibly qualify as an expert on the subject in any court in the country.) And that not one medical professional who actually works with trans people (and isn’t part of the crackpot segment of the religious right) agrees with him. And that the grotesque stereotype he promulgates concerning the physical appearance of trans women is not only inexcusably cruel for a so-called professional, but bears no resemblance to reality.

The very fact that I – and thousands like me – exist disproves everything McHugh claims. And everything that you claim. It must be frustrating to you to know ithat. But there’s nothing you can do about it.

milkandsugar · June 14, 2009, 11:56am

DonnaL, I have read many of your posts and I have learned so much from you. I believe all individuals are spirtually entitled to pursue personal peace and happiness by whatever means God has given us and that includes everything.

The best way to deal with a ■■■■■ is not to. I wish everyone would put claremarie on the ignore list, because she is toxic and hateful.

She seems to like an audience so the best way to handle her is not even respond to her schizophrenic posts.

spideygirl · June 14, 2009, 12:37pm

clairemarie -

How does a story of one clinic’s negligence in carrying out proper mental health screening indict a medical procedure?

Instead of merely calling it subjective, I think the following quote sounds only slightly more articulate than a conversation between Tony Soprano and his friends at the Bada Bing Club. My second thought was Rachel McAdams’ character in *Mean Girls<a href=“maybe%20when%20she%20grows%20up,%20and%20learns%20a%20few%20more%20vocabulary%20words”>/i</a>. Did someone who graduated from medical school really say this???:

Dr. Paul McHugh

Important points to note in the third article you posted, Clairemarie:

the results of many gender reassignment studies are unsound because researchers lost track of more than half of the participants…
Transgender psychiatrists, who assess whether patients should change sex, agree that more scientific research is needed…But Kevan Wylie, chairman of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ working party on gender identity disorders, said that all of his patients’ lives have drastically improved following gender reassignment surgery. 

Dr Wylie added that it was difficult to conduct research on the outcome of gender reassignment, or to compare its effects with alternative treatments, because transsexualism was such a “rare experience”. Urological surgeon James Bellringer, who has performed more than 200 sex changes over the past four years, claimed that trying to carry out research that involves studying a control group of transsexual patients who were denied hormones and surgery would be unethical… 

Mr Bellringer, who works at the main NHS gender identity clinic at Charing Cross hospital in west London, said: "I don’t think that any research that denied transsexual patients treatment would get past an ethics committee. There’s no other treatment that works. You either have an operation or suffer a miserable life.

spideygirl · June 14, 2009, 12:39pm

I don’t agree, however, with in turn being uncharitable to someone who comes on here to debate. Putting people on an ignore list who are spending time trying to articulate a viewpoint which differs from your own is not a very enlightened approach. It’s a matter of choice, of course. I don’t understand why anyone would want to come to a political forum to hear only from people whose views were comfortable to come across. It certainly destroys an excellent opportunity to have an important conversation, bring everything into daylight, and potentially persuade people in a new direction.

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 12:47pm

“the results of many gender reassignment studies are unsound because researchers lost track of more than half of the participants…”

I found that interesting as well. Why do you suppose that these patients dropped off the radar screen? Wouldn’t it make sense for a competent clinic to keep careful track of its patients, especially when performing such radical, no-turning-back surgery that has generated controversy from its very outset? Very strange.

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 12:50pm

“The fact that they would ignore his long history of transphobia and homophobia doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

The point that you are ignoring is that Dr. McHugh is not a quack or a crackpot, as you would like to portray him. Instead, he is a highly respected expert in his field, who has written one of the standard textbooks on psychiatry. You may disagree with him, but you have no basis other than personal prejudice to slam his expertise.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 12:59pm

But his “field” has nothing to do with trans issues. You have no basis whatsoever for saying he has expertise in that area. Nor have you refuted any of the facts I stated.

So. My pointing out that I exist, and that my existence disproves his stereotypes, equals personal prejudice. Do you actually believe that you’re persuading anyone? Speaking of delusional!

But go ahead. Every word you write demonstrates your ignorance.

spideygirl · June 14, 2009, 12:59pm

Dr. Josef Mengele was awarded a PHD from the University of Munich and a medical degree from the University of Frankfort. He was also given a prestigious military honor for his heroism in pulling two soldiers out of a burning tank.

I am not in any way making a comparison between Dr, McHugh and the monster Dr. Mengele. My point is instead that just because a person has significant educational or career achievements does not mean that they are immune from profound stupidity or even evil.

BunsenBurner · June 14, 2009, 1:02pm

spideygirl, this thread did not start in the political forum, it is intended to be in the Cafe. Let’s keep it here. clairemarie, why don’t you start a new thread in the political subforum if you want a heated debate?

spideygirl · June 14, 2009, 1:07pm

Bunsenburner -

The OP said:

Sounds political to me. Personally, I don’t care where debates happen. I am happy to oblige any location parameters.

It is curious, though, that the issue of posters wanting to shut down conversations only seems to occur when someone comes on touting a view from the right, which clairmarie seems to be doing. I think I can say that fairly, as I am arguing against her here.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:10pm

An article refuting McHugh’s conclusions as being unjustified by the data even at the time his study was published in 1979:

[IJ</a> TRANSGENDER - Chapter 3: Meyer & Reter, 1979](<a href=“Qualitätsmanagement | WEKA Shop”>Qualitätsmanagement | WEKA Shop)

Friedemann Pf

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:16pm

[Pregnant</a> Men and Caricatures](<a href=“http://www.uslaw.com/library/Miscellaneous/Pregnant_Men_Caricatures.php?item=125026]Pregnant”>http://www.uslaw.com/library/Miscellaneous/Pregnant_Men_Caricatures.php?item=125026)

Paul McHugh of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a man who takes much credit for closing the school’s Gender Identity Clinic, essentially believes believes that medical professionals should not perform gender reassignment surgeries because doing so makes them complicit in mental illness. That belief, if he is sincerely concerned that transgender persons are by definition mentally ill, is valid. Yet… when reading McHugh’s various papers, I can’t help but to think that many of his arguments and beliefs about transgender persons are subjective stereotypes based on his limited interactions with trans people and are the result of having a prejudiced worldview.

<ol>
<li>Faulty Analogy</li>
</ol>

One of McHugh’s main arguments against gender reassignment surgery is based on a problematic analogy between transgender persons and babies born with ambiguous genitalia.

In a nutshell, in this article, McHugh points out that some babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. Sometimes, doctors convince the parents of such babies to have their ambiguous genitalia turned into vaginas even when the babies have XY chromosomes. Doing so results in confusion in later life, since the babies were born as genetic males. At this point, I should say that many people, myself included, would concede all of this. What I take issue with is McHugh’s taking his observation a step further with the following non sequiter:

<pre><code>“Quite clearly, then, we psychiatrists should work to discourage those adults who seek surgical sex reassignment…I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes.”
</code></pre>

At this point, I am wondering if McHugh genuinely doesn’t know the difference between a baby born with ambiguous genitalia versus a transgender adult. In the case of the baby who, for lack of a better term, “wrongly” undergoes genital reconstructive surgery and suffers later in life because of it, the resulting confusion and “dysphoria” results from the fact that doctors cut off his under-developed *****, turned it into a vagina, and raised him as a girl often without him knowing it. And, importantly, he feels like a boy inside. In the case of the adult, who is fully conscious of what he is doing, there is no such confusion. And in fact, if my understanding is correct, transgender persons feel pretty much exactly how the male-baby-raised-as-a-girl feels: the outside doesn’t match the inside. In effect, they feel like those who “wrongly” have female genitals even though they are really males. McHugh, however, seems to think that feelings of gender dysphoria are legitimate only in the case of a child born with ambiguous genitalia who was raised as a female. The feeling, in his mind, is not legitimate in men with unambiguous man parts who were raised as men. (He doesn’t discuss biological women).

What is most troubling about this faulty analogy is that McHugh’s justification for claiming that sex reassignment should not be performed on transgender persons is that his arguments are based in stereotype. As we will see below, McHugh’s arguments suggest that he does not believe that gender dysphoric feelings in adult men are legitimate because even when they dress like women they’re still men and they will always be men no matter what.

<ol>
<li>Stereotypes and Respect</li>
</ol>

To begin, McHugh’s assumption and worldview is essentially this: Transgender women are not “real” women and that’s that. This is a common refrain I’ve observed, particularly in comment threads following articles about the pregnant transman.

For those who are not “passable,” for those who look like- as McHugh calls them- “cariciatures of women” I understand the… “concern.” It sort of looks like we (meaning those of us who call transpersons by their preferred pronouns) are “acting.” Like we’re kids having an invisible tea party in some sort of tedious uber-politically correct game.

Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be every person in the world. I don’t know what a transgender person feels inside. Just because I am confident that I am a woman inside and out, that doesn’t mean everyone is. And so, in light of that, calling someone by his or her preferred pronoun is a very small concession for me to make to respect someone else’s experience in the world.

I understand, however, that that’s too much to ask of some people. There will always be those people who continue “enlightening” us that, biologically, XX is female and XY is male dammit, as if we don’t already know that. Thanks.

McHugh, however, argues that reassignment surgery is not appropriate because a genetic male can not ever or should not ever be anything other than a man. Based on his limited experience and with biology-is-destiny-goggles on, he goes on to argue that transwomen remain men because they still have male characteristics.

For instance, he recounts his experiences with transwomen: Like men, they supposedly remain obsessed with sex, they are uninterested in babies and children, and they want to have sexual relationships with women. McHugh continues that they are “caricatures of women” who wore “high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness?but their large hands, prominent Adam?s apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged).” In other words, they’re just a bunch of men in dresses.

Neat-o.

I have to question the scientific and logical integrity of an argument that accepts, creates, and perpetuates stereotypes about groups of people based on limited subjective interactions with a few members of said group. And, not that my experience is the be-all, but my experiences with this population have been quite different. It sort of makes me question McHugh’s perceptions and biases that he brings to his work.

In sum, I don’t see much good coming from McHugh’s work in this area. Couched in biases and stereotypes, other people with sinister motives will latch onto his ideas and use them to justify discrimination and hatred against transpeople. If there’s any redeeming value it comes from this: Since McHugh only seems to be “concerned” with “male transsexuals,” it’s clear that female-to-male transgender persons are A-OK!

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:19pm

McHugh has plenty of other sins to answer for:

Washington Times August 21, 2002

Strange Bedfellows, by Judith Reisman and Dennis Jarrard:

“If you found the clergy sex abuse scandal shocking, prepare for another jolt: the Catholic bishops are getting their “expert” advice on pedophilia from people who have covered up or even defended sex between men and children.The bishops recently chose Dr. Paul McHugh, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, as chief behavioral scientist for their new clergy sex crimes review board. Yet Dr. McHugh once said Johns Hopkins’ Sexual Disorders Clinic, which treats molesters, was justified in concealing multiple incidents of child rape and fondling to police, despite a state law requiring staffers to report them.” We did what we thought was appropriate," said Dr. McHugh, then director of Hopkins’ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which oversaw the sex clinic. He agreed with his subordinate, clinic head Fred Berlin, who broke the then-new child sexual abuse law on the grounds that it might keep child molesters from seeking treatment."

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:20pm

So Claremarie is now in the position of relying on someone who admittedly broke the law by protecting pedophiles!

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 1:22pm

If the Johns Hopkins clinic had indeed been working miracles with its sexual-reassignment patients, then Dr. McHugh could not possibly have persuaded the university to close the clinic, and to keep it closed lo these many years. The argument that McHugh is an evil, horrible man who used nefarious means to shut down the clinic is difficult to sustain when one considers the high esteem in which his colleagues evidently hold him.

Remember, we are talking about surgery that mutilates and/or removes perfectly healthy parts of the human body in order to treat a psychiatric condition.

[Psychiatric</a> Misadventures](<a href=“http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/mchugh.htm]Psychiatric”>http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/mchugh.htm)

“The skills of our plastic surgeons, particularly on the genito-urinary system, are impressive. They were obtained, however, not to treat the gender identity problem, but to repair congenital defects, injuries, and the effects of destructive diseases such as cancer in this region of the body.
That you can get something done doesn’t always mean that you should do it. In sex reassignment cases, there are so many problems right at the start. The patient’s claim that this has been a lifelong problem is seldom checked with others who have known him since childhood. It seems so intrusive and untrusting to discuss the problem with others, even though they might provide a better gage of the seriousness of the problem, how it emerged, its fluctuations of intensity over time, and its connection with other experiences. When you discuss what the patient means by “feeling like a woman,” you often get a sex stereotype in return–something that woman physicians note immediately is a male caricature of women’s attitudes and interests. One of our patients, for example, said that, as a woman, he would be more “invested with being than with doing.”
It is not obvious how this patient’s feeling that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body differs from the feeling of a patient with anorexia nervosa that she is obese despite her emaciated, cachectic state. We don’t do liposuction on anorexics. Why amputate the genitals of these poor men? Surely, the fault is in the mind not the member.
Yet, if you justify augmenting breasts for women who feel underendowed, why not do it and more for the man who wants to be a woman? A plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins provided the voice of reality for me on this matter based on his practice and his natural awe at the mystery of the body. One day while we were talking about it, he said to me: “Imagine what it’s like to get up at dawn and think about spending the day slashing with a knife at perfectly well-formed organs, because you psychiatrists do not understand what is the problem here but hope surgery may do the poor wretch some good.”
The zeal for this sex-change surgery–perhaps, with the exception of frontal lobotomy, the most radical therapy ever encouraged by twentieth century psychiatrists–did not derive from critical reasoning or thoughtful assessments. These were so faulty that no one holds them up anymore as standards for launching any therapeutic exercise, let alone one so irretrievable as a sex-change operation. The energy came from the fashions of the seventies that invaded the clinic–if you can do it and he wants it, why not do it? It was all tied up with the spirit of doing your thing, following your bliss, an aesthetic that sees diversity as everything and can accept any idea, including that of permanent sex change, as interesting and that views resistance to such ideas as uptight if not oppressive. Moral matters should have some salience here. These include the waste of human resources; the confusions imposed on society where these men/women insist on acceptance, even in athletic competition, with women; the encouragement of the “illusion of technique,” which assumes that the body is like a suit of clothes to be hemmed and stitched to style; and, finally, the ghastliness of the mutilated anatomy. But lay these strong moral objections aside and consider only that this surgical practice has distracted effort from genuine investigations attempting to find out just what has gone wrong for these people–what has, by their testimony, given them years of torment and psychological distress and prompted them to accept these grim and disfiguring surgical procedures.”

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:36pm

Now it seems that she has resorted to quoting Paul McHugh to support her reliance on Paul McHugh! Circular, a little?

I have a serious question for other members. Why has nobody reported Claremarie for her repeated violations of the CC Terms of Service in this thread? How is it that her telling me, over and over again, that I’m delusional and seriously mentally disturbed, and that I’m “pretending” to be a woman, doesn’t violate the TOS?

Flames, insults, and personal attacks will not be tolerated. It’s fine to disagree with opinions, ideas, and facts, but always with respect for the other person. Also, note that messages express the thoughts of the writers, not the community, its owners, staff, or moderators. Visitors who post discourteous messages will be warned; repeat offenders will lose posting rights.

General Behavior. Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others. Members who post in a manner that makes other members unwelcome or uncomfortable, or who conduct themselves in a manner in any way detrimental to the College Confidential community, will lose posting privileges.

Do any of you have any idea how “unwelcome” and “uncomfortable” it makes me that she’s allowed to continue to insult me by her blanket assertions that all trans people – obviously including me, since she chose to jump into this thread immediately after I had been very open in posting about myself – are seriously mentally disturbed? How would any of you like being put in the position of having to defend yourself against accusations like that, and of being expected to demonstrate your own sanity? Of having to point out that my posts since I joined, and the very fact of my educational and professional history, refute her insults? Of having to refer to my own personal appearance, for God’s sake? Why should she be permitted to put me in this position, under the excuse of “debate,” when she has admitted she’s never even met a trans person? This is my life, not a debate.

Maybe some of you have an idea now of how difficult it is in this society for trans people, and how strong one has to be to survive in the face of this kind of continual assault. (Not even to mention the threat of physical violence that trans women always face.) I have received infinitely more personal abuse on College Confidential than I have in real life since I transitioned in April 2005 as, so far as I know, the second attorney ever to transition at a New York law firm. Infinitely more, because the grand total of problems like this that I’ve had in real life is zero.

Would Claremarie be permitted to hurl repeated personal insults calling gay or lesbian posters “delusional” or “seriously mentally disturbed” by virtue of their sexual orientation? I doubt it. She’d be banned. But it seems anything goes, even here, with respect to trans people.

Pah.

She’s obviously trying to drive me off CC, because she knows that as long as I’m here, she can’t get away with her viciousness.

I don’t want her to succeed. But I can’t do this alone. At some point, this kind of thing beomes demoralizing.

Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono, is changing gender

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