Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono, is changing gender

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 1:55pm

One more link, and then I’m done with defending myself against Claremarie, and maybe done with CC in general. My greatest fear in disclosing my history here was being put in this position. And that’s exactly what’s happened on this thread.

[J</a>. Michael Bailey supporter Paul McHugh defames transsexual women in Catholic magazine article](<a href=“http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/McHugh/McHugh%20on%20Transsexualism.htm]J”>J. Michael Bailey supporter Paul McHugh defames transsexual women in Catholic magazine article)

Paul McHugh Defames Transsexual Women:

In a Catholic magazine article in 2004, Paul McHugh (the Vatican’s advisor on sexual matters and an avid J. Michael Bailey supporter) monstrously defamed and ridiculed transsexual women.

In that article, McHugh also claimed credit for ‘discovering’ that transitioned women are really either “homosexual men” or “mentally-ill sexually paraphilic men”, relegating Blanchard’s role to that of merely confirming his (McHugh’s) “two-type theory”. Since that time, major Catholic media have cited McHugh’s article in an escalation of trans-bashing by the Catholic hierarchy, as evidenced in the notes further below.

As a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of G. W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics, McHugh’s credentials have given him clout in elite circles amongst those unaware of his highly-personal hatred of transitioned women (which he masks as “scientific understanding”). It was in these roles that he promoted the publication of J. Michael Bailey’s transphobic book.

For more on McHugh’s defamation of trans women, see also Andrea James’ Webpage about McHugh and Monica Roberts essay “Why Is The Catholic Church Hatin’ On Transpeople?”

Commentary on the McHugh article:

In November 2004, psychiatrist Paul McHugh (the Vatican’s advisor on sexual matters) came out openly and stated his “scientific” position on “sex changes”. . . . The article is entitled “Surgical Sex”, and it can be found at the following Catholic Church website:

[First</a> Things - Home](<a href=“November 2004 | Print Edition | First Things”>November 2004 | Print Edition | First Things)

This article is the latest in a long series of attacks on “sex changes” by McHugh, going all the way back to his personality conflicts and confrontations with John Money at Johns Hopkins in the 70’s, with McHugh personally being responsible for closing down the gender clinic there. For more of the historical background on McHugh, see Andrea James’ page “Paul McHugh on Transsexualism”

In his recent article, McHugh is ruthless in his caricaturing of transsexual women, which he does in a manner reminiscent of school-yard bullies instead of “famous scientists”. In the article he mocks these women and ridicules them in the grossest of ways:

“…The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They 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)…”

Here we see him making fun of women who, through no fault of their own, had been forced by fate to be masculinized by testosterone, and who had then in many clinics been forced to dress as caricatures of women (in high heels and with lots of makeup) during extended “real life tests” (RLT) as part of the forced-protocol for obtaining access to surgeries.

Furthermore, many of the old clinics forced trans women into RLT without the benefit of hormones, only prescribing hormones after an extended RLT (a practice is still enforced at The Clarke Institute in Canada - now called the CAMH).

McHugh’s remarks are thus seen as incredibly offensive - he is seen as ridiculing the very clients that those old clinics forced into the torture of RLT and social transition without the benefit of hormones. And of course McHugh ignores any and all effects of the many modern treatments, including FFS, that can correct the masculinization-effects which McHugh ridicules. Thus he is playing on crude social stereotypes of trans women as “men in dresses”, taunting and humiliating them in absentia in the process.

Then, a little further along, we notice a subtle but fascinating claim:

McHugh apparently sees himself as the instigator and principal propagator of the now infamous “two-type” theory of transsexualism. Furthermore, since he apparently believes that he “has won the scientific war against sex changes” by convincing the Vatican to denounce transsexualism in 2000, and by supporting Mr. Bailey’s book on the inside at the National Academy of Sciences in 2003-2004, he thinks it is now time to tell the history of his great success!

In telling this story, he reduces the contribution of The Clarke (namely sexologist Ray Blanchard) to that of merely confirming his and Meyer’s ideas from the mid-1970’s. This greatly reduces Blanchard’s “fame” as the “discoverer” of anything, and pushes the two-type theory back to a time in the 70’s when psychiatric theories of transsexualism (and homosexuality too) were just prejudices in disguise:

“… Thanks to this research, Dr. Meyer was able to make some sense of the mental disorders that were driving this request for unusual and radical treatment. Most of the cases fell into one of two quite different groups. One group consisted of conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men who saw a sex-change as a way to resolve their conflicts over homosexuality by allowing them to behave sexually as females with men. The other group, mostly older men, consisted of heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females. As they had grown older, they had become eager to add more verisimilitude to their costumes and either sought or had suggested to them a surgical transformation that would include breast implants, penile amputation, and pelvic reconstruction to resemble a woman. … Further study of similar subjects in the psychiatric services of the Clark Institute in Toronto identified these men by the auto-arousal they experienced in imitating sexually seductive females.”

These assertions, based on “research” in the 1970’s, suggest why Blanchard (and later J. Michael Bailey and Anne Lawrence) also constantly refer to intense, early-onset transsexualism as “extreme effeminate homosexuality”, rather than as a form of innate gender feelings in conflict with body sex. These assertions come down to us from a time when homosexuality was openly pathologized by psychiatrists - a time when psychiatrists’ knee-jerk reactions were that trans women were simply “gay men”.

However, unscientific thought they are, these assertions have been forcefully propagated for over 30 years by this very Paul McHugh, who has been in a position to make them stick in psychiatric circles - even in the face of rapidly mounting and massive counter-evidence against them.

We strongly suspect that when the Bailey book came out, McHugh launched this same kind of tirade against transsexual women inside the National Academies. McHugh is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the current President’s Council on Bioethics. He would have been the very “top authority” whom the leaders of the Academies turned to to learn about transsexualism. No one there would have realized that McHugh has been on a personal Catholic religious rampage against “sex changes”, and has had a closed mind on this entire subject, for the past 30 years.

Is is any wonder then, that the National Academies refused to ever meet with any of the many professional/scientific/academic trans women who wrote and complained when the Academies published the Bailey book? After all, the Academies’ elite insider McHugh paints a picture of us as being witchlike creatures, creatures who would frighten any normal person to death if they had to be in the same room with us! Thus is it any wonder the National Academies gave us the silent treatment?

And now, egotist that he is, McHugh is trying to steal Blanchard’s thunder by declaring that psychoanalyst Jon Meyer and he (McHugh) were actually the researchers who originated the two-type theory of transsexual mental illness, which we shall from now on call the “Meyer-McHugh theory”. According to McHugh, Blanchard merely made some confirming measurements, somewhat in the vein that Bailey “made some confirming observations of transsexuals in Chicago”, and then gave a catchy name to one of the types. But in his mind it is really he, McHugh, who figured this all out once and for all, way back in the 1970’s.

You will also notice in his article that McHugh also takes credit for causing and sponsoring William Reiner’s pioneering work on the cloacal exstrophy cases. By doing this, he moves into a position to “speak for Reiner”, and thus more easily misspeak regarding the Reiner’s main findings regarding the nature of gender. McHugh even has the nerve to ask regarding trans women,

” Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity (“gender” was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?",

i.e., suggesting that transitioners expect SRS to change their inner identities, when in fact SRS is done to confirm and accommodate to one’s existing inner identity. McHugh refuses to believe gendered feelings and gendered identities exist independent of body sex - even though Reiner’s work amply demonstrates such independent-of-body-sex inner feeling and identities.

Of course Reiner can openly tell the story regarding his pioneering work on the negative impacts of many intersex infant surgeries without alienating McHugh. He can help bring more wisdom and compassion to the treatment of infant intersex kids, who in the past have been arbitrarily assigned to a gender based on “practical surgical considerations” rather than waiting till they can speak and act for themselves and give their parents some clue as to their inner identities. McHugh loved these results, because they helped him “stop sex changes” (and in the cases of intersex infants, this was usually a correct thing to do).

We wonder though, will Reiner have to wait for McHugh to pass on before telling the overall implications of his results more fully? After all, Reiner’s cloacal exstrophy follow-ups are to gender what the moons of Jupiter were to astronomy: The very visible and undeniable reality of something mysterious at the time that had been previously denied (by the Catholic Church). In this case we see stark evidence for gendered feelings and identities that are not based on body sex and upbringing, feelings and identities that emerge strongly during childhood and that cry out for social and physical expression.

William Reiner left Johns Hopkins around a year ago or so, and is now at University of Oklahoma at Oklahoma City. He heads a program in pediatric urology and is doing research there.

But even so, can Reiner really follow-up and talk about those broader implications of his research results? Any such discussions would challenge McHugh’s position on gender. McHugh has a powerful stranglehold in elite scientific circles on opinion in that area, and we’ve seen the power wielded by McHugh against those who dare disagree with him (for example, John Money). Would Reiner dare to openly contradict McHugh’s misinterpretations of the cloacal exstrophy results regarding innate gender identity independent of body sex? Only time will tell.

Note that we do see him coming close to this, when talking about intersex kids growing up (it is just a short step to talking about trans kids this way) in the following quotes from a recent article entitled “Living in between, but no longer in silence” (NYU News), by Kim Llerena:

Since the 1950s, surgery has been the preferred method among urologists for dealing with intersex bodies, by “normalizing” genitalia so that children could grow up in a definitive male or female role. Recently, however, new evidence has led some urologists to concede that the genitals do not make the man - or the woman.

“I don’t think it matters whether you assign a sex or you don’t, or even whether you assign the correct sex,” said Dr. William Reiner, a professor in the urology department at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. “A child is going to identify [himself or herself]. A child’s sexual identity can only be known by the child.”

In any event, William Reiner is a brilliant scientist and a gentleman and in the end his pioneering work will speak for itself. He will make his mark in scientific history not by the domineering pushing of unsound pet theories as did Money and McHugh, but by doing it the hard way: by doing good science.

Meantime, by prematurely grasping for his place in history, McHugh has now tipped his hand in his essay. He WANTS people to know about his important role in the Vatican decision to denounce transsexualism. He wants people to know about his role in the National Academies’ publication and promotion of the Bailey book, a book that the prestigious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has called “Queer Science”. He wants to be “appreciated” for what he considers to be his important scientific efforts to “stop sex changes”.

However, the publication of this incredibly offensive and overstated Catholic magazine article may prove to be quite a blunder by McHugh:

His irrational and unscientific hatred of transsexual women shows through too clearly, in his gross ridiculing and caricaturing of trans women.

He even has the nerve to comment about how transitioning women talked incessantly about sex in their psychiatric interviews - when it was the interviewer-psychiatrists themselves who would talk about nothing else but sex!

He’s also seen, out in the open, overlooking obvious “other interpretations of key data” much like Money did. And, for example, he has totally ignored the evidence of decades-worth of successful transitions by thousands of women.

He then concludes his article by calling gender variance “madness”.

McHugh is seen here doing great and tragic harm by making ego-maniacal warped-science pronouncements about transsexual people, just as Money did in his efforts to promote infant genital surgery on intersex kids.

They are two of a kind: Money and McHugh.

Money for decades pushed sex reassignments of intersex infants, under a bogus theory of gender. Money insisted wrongly that gender is socially constructed and that intersex boys could be turned into girls if reassigned surgically early enough. He then deliberately prevented mounting counter-evidence to his theory from being widely revealed to his scientific colleagues. For several decades he pushed and promoted the practice of infant intersex surgeries, even in the face of mounting evidence that his theory was incorrect.

McHugh has for decades tried to stop transsexual sex reassignments, under a bogus theory that trans women are homosexual men or sexual paraphilics. By power of position and personality he stopped (not only the infant genital surgeries, but also) the transsexual surgeries at John’s Hopkins. He then deliberately prevented mounting counter-evidence to his theory from being widely revealed to his scientific colleagues. For decades now he has pushed and promoted the idea that “sex changes are wrong”, even in the face of mounting evidence that his theory was incorrect - evidence that transsexual transitions can work out extremely well.

In the end, just like Money, McHugh will go down in history as a devil of a man who shattered the lives of tens of thousands of gender variant people. I think we should help him along in this, by making sure his “important role” in history is fully documented and well-remembered.

Lynn Conway

November 26, 2004

Mary13 · June 14, 2009, 2:11pm

Donna, I could be wrong, but I think that abuse comes from a single poster, correct? Please be aware that you have a great deal of support on CC. Perhaps the terms of service are being ignored on this thread because it’s viewed by the mods as political debate, which is far less regulated.

You’re not alone. Many posters spoke up on this thread when claremarie made her appearance.

Donna, don’t forget what you said earlier—that “more and more people sitting on the fence are falling off (in the direction of human kindness)” when they read claremarie’s vitriolic responses. In a perverse way, she’s performing a service by forcing you to educate the rest of us, thereby creating a more just and tolerant world. Your departure would be a tremendous loss.

VeryHappy · June 14, 2009, 2:46pm

Here, here. ^^^ Hooray for Mary13.

That said, you should know I’m not reading too much of this anymore. Too technical, too long, and too vitriolic for my Sunday afternoon pasttime. But if the rest of you are enjoying it, please go right ahead.

eireann · June 14, 2009, 5:23pm

Donna, I just want to say that I recognize how difficult it is to discuss all of this. I’m not surprised that you have gotten more hostility on CC than in real life. In many message boards that I participate in, I have seen that some people have more a tendency to spew straight vitriol and hate when they can hide behind a computer screen.

Based on many questions and responses, it seems like you have done a great job educating here, and I want to thank you for being so open about yourself.

AnudduhMom · June 14, 2009, 5:32pm

Yeah, I’m with VeryHappy, have learned a lot here, and I thank all of you, even clarewhat’sits, for the enlightenment. Her first McHugh post told me there was a lot of wrong thinking there at JH during his tenure.

But speaking as a person of very little brain, well, I need to lie down before I read your last messages, Donna! I will, though!

I have a question for you though, Donna (and of course feel free to ignore it, you’ve been such a peach with all us nosy-parkers):

At some point you were married? And you had a child with your wife? What was her reaction to finding out you were actually a woman? Did she know before? Is she getting some emotional support to help her through? And surely it was also something of a surprise that her son was gay – is that relationship good?

I realized those are horribly nosy questions, but I’m gonna hit send and you can yell at me if you want.

A.M.
ps, and hey, we sound like sisters in ho-humness … as I sit here with my cat

mousegray · June 14, 2009, 7:11pm

I’m sorry to see this thread take this turn because I was learning a lot from Donna and the other posters who were willing to talk about being transgender. There aren’t many opportunities for those of us outside this particular community to hear unvarnished, first-hand opinions, life stories, etc, and where we can ask nosy, impertinent questions. So, Donna, I know your life mission is not to be of service to us here, but please don’t be discouraged by one person’s intolerance. Mary13 is right, you are not alone in being outraged by clairmarie’s posts.

One thing I’m curious about is the particulars of how one identifies with being male or female, if it’s not aligned with one’s physical characteristics. When I look around me at the general populace, and think about my own orientations/inclinations, whatever, much of it seems culturally determined. Personal adornment, pretty dresses, etc. have not always been the province of females, for example. I guess one reason this is confusing to me is that, even after being a woman and a mother for 50 years, I don’t feel particularly female identified. (and I realize as a non-trans person, I can’t really extrapolate from my own experience what yours has been, even though that’s what I’m doing basically.) As a child, I played with boys, was rough and tumble, never interested in dolls, etc. Also, as a mother, I’ve watched my own, and other kids, develop their identities and noticed that there seem to be innate, traditionally male or female characteristics (boys and wheels, for example). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning the validity of being transgender, gay, straight, or anything between (and I do believe that we’re all on a spectrum and these things are not necessarily dualistic), but what I wonder is, if we lived in a truly gender neutral society (in fantasy land), would you (Donna, and any others who are willing to answer) feel the same way about the need to become a transwoman?

mimk6 · June 14, 2009, 7:43pm

Donna, I do not like the tone that ClaireMarie used or some of what she said, although I admit that I did not wade through all her quotes or yours. I believe the Parent Cafe is a moderated forum. However, since Gender Identity Disorder is currently a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by the psychiatric community, it is not inappropriate to raise the question of whether it is ever a mental disorder. The main criteria is the desire to be, or the insistence that one is, of the other sex. There cannot be a concurrent intersex condition. I think it is unfair to say that people cannot raise the possibility of it being a mental disorder given its current status in the DSM. This may change with the next version. Along those lines, I think we might see Body Integrity Identity Disorder in the next DSM which is the belief that one’s body will not be complete without getting rid of a body part, usually a limb. Below is the link to an article Newsweek ran on it which also referenced some of the issues faced with Gender Identity Disorder. There are some similar dynamics that exist and similar ethical issues that are raised for the medical community. I admire your intelligence and your courage in sharing your story and I’ve learned some things from reading it. But please do not make it so that people cannot express (assuming they are expressed with courtesy) valid questions or arguments that have been very obviously carefully discussed by people whose job it is to reach conclusions on these matters. And, by the way, something being in the DSM doesn’t make someone seriously mentally disturbed – there is a lot of variance both within a particular diagnosis and within the range of conditions listed in the DSM from very mild to very severe.

[BIID:</a> Why Sufferers Amputate Their Own Limbs | Newsweek Health | Newsweek.com](<a href=“http://www.newsweek.com/id/138932]BIID:”>http://www.newsweek.com/id/138932)

pugmadkate · June 14, 2009, 8:10pm

I think that’s an odd standard. Something being in the DSM does not mean someone is mentally disturbed at all. As you noted, the DSM changes. I cannot speak for Donna but I don’t see the problem with not accept the validity of something in the DSM.

mimk6 · June 14, 2009, 8:23pm

Regardless of whether you accept its validity, the fact that it is there certainly opens the door for some people to consider the possibility of it being a disorder and, therefore, it’s not odd for people to raise that question in a discussion. The DSM does carry credibility for some people. Whether or not it should is a another issue.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 8:41pm

Yes, Claremarie is the one person in this thread who’s been personally insulting and abusive, although there was that poster in another thread (whose name I’ve already forgotten), who decided to handle my disagreement with him on the subject being discussed by addressing me with a made-up male name.

And I’m aware that a lot of this kind of thing goes on, about all sorts of things, all over the Internet. I wasn’t really expecting it on CC.

A lot of questions that people raised are very complicated and there are no one-sentence answers, so I’m not going to try to tackle all of them immediately. Unfortunately, I have work to get done.

AnudduhMom, I don’t want to get into too much detail here about my marriage, even though I’ve written some things about it before. Especially given the presence of one malevolent person here. And the fact that this is a public forum, and that my son is a member and knows that I post here; even though he never reads what I write, he certainly could, and I’m not sure he’d appreciate seeing a public discussion of the not-always-pleasant details of his parents’ divorce!

So all I’ll say, without assigning blame, is that my former spouse and I probably got married far too quickly (only 9 months after we’d met); that she knew for many years before our marriage ended that I had gender issues (which I had convinced myself when I got married were “in the past,” and did my best to ignore and suppress during the marriage, like many others in my position more than 20 years ago, when there was no Internet and I had no idea that this sort of thing never goes away); that we were incompatible in many ways and that was only one of them, and wasn’t the most important reason why we eventually separated in September 2000 after 13 years of marriage, when our son was 10. I didn’t transition until April 2005, 4 1/2 years later, and didn’t tell her about my intentions until after our divorce was final some time before that. It really wasn’t her business by that point (she’d long had a new boyfriend); her only concern was that our son was OK with it, and once she learned he was – he had known about my plans for more than a year but kept that knowledge confidential – she’s said nothing since. She even started using my current name after a while, and things are civil now. Like many divorced couples, we talk about our son, and lately about selling our house (finally!). Since we have a common interest on both subjects, there isn’t a reason for conflict. She has no issues with our son’s being gay, and, I think, realizes that it isn’t something that has anything to do with my gender issues.

So, this wasn’t a situation like those stories you read where husband suddenly announces to wife that he’s planning to become a woman. Our marriage was long over by the time I finally made the decision to transition, began to transition medically, and told her about my decision to transition socially.

That’s the basic outline. None of which is a secret from my son, or anyone who knows me or my ex.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 8:56pm

mimk6, nobody’s disputing that being trans in this society is the source of enormous amounts of distress, depression, and dysphoria. There’s a difference between someone asking in good faith what I think of the categorization in the DSM (which, in reality, largely exists as a diagnosis for purposes of justifying the medical and surgical treatment that trans people so often require to “cure” their dysphoria), and telling me, based on nothing but religious and ideological predisposition (accompanied by an admission that she knows no trans people personally), that I am “seriously mentally disturbed” and “delusional.” That’s a personal insult, not the raising of a question. (A question to which my answer, and that of many professionals in the field, is that transsexuality should either be reclassified as a physical issue, or should be categorized to recognize that the distress and dysphoria arise not from the transness itself per se, but from the reaction to being deprived of the ability to express, in whatever way is best for the individual, that individual’s gender identity.)

Nobody with credentials in this area (other than McHugh, even assuming for the sake of argument that his credentials didn’t expire in the early 1970’s!), whatever they think the origin of transness is, disputes that the only “cure” for gender dysphoria is to align the body (and/or the social role) with the brain, and that all efforts at the converse have failed for the last 100 years.

As I’m sure you know, the next edition of the DSM is scheduled to come out in a couple of years. There’s a working group on trans and gender identity issues, consisting of many experts with various viewpoints. McHugh, needless to say, is not among them. Nobody in that working group disputes the necessity of transition in appropriate cases, and the chances are 100% that hormone treatments and therapy will be presented as the indicated medical treatments in such cases in the next edition, just as in the current edition. Perhaps equally needless to say, the chances are zero that the DSM will go backwards to the insupportable viewpoints expressed by claremarie. Only forwards. Will transness be removed entirely from the DSM, as homosexuality was removed 35 years ago? Not this time, and maybe not ever, because some diagnostic basis will always be required to justify the necessary medical treatment.

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 8:57pm

The Newsweek article on “BIID” was appalling.

“Surprising as it may seem, Josh is not alone. He has what some scientists are calling Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), an exceedingly rare condition characterized by an overwhelming desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs or become paraplegic. The desire to be disabled seems so bizarre and contrary to basic human instincts that those who suffer from BIID have largely kept their compulsion a secret. But online communities of those with BIID have formed over the last decade, galvanizing a small movement to bring the disorder into the open.”

But, if it’s OK to amputate a ***** or remove breasts, why not allow the amputation of a healthy arm or leg, if the patient INSISTS that such mutilation is essential to his mental (if not physical) health?
Honestly, I do not understand how it’s possible to support sex-reassignment surgery but to draw the line at amputating healthy limbs. In both circumstances, physicians are destroying healthy, functioning body parts in order to attempt to treat a mental condition. Actually, in the case of a “BIID” patient, the surgery at least has the end result of turning him into an honest to goodness disabled person. Sex reassignment surgery can NEVER turn a male into a woman who can conceive and bear a child, or a female into a male who can father a child.

And those who find these discussions offensive can choose not to participate. This is a discussion forum, not a therapy session.

mousegray · June 14, 2009, 8:57pm

mimk6, I think it’s important to remember that what may be for you an abstract argument is someone’s life. It’s not a hot button issue like gun control where you can choose sides and argue your case. I don’t pretend to be any better informed about this than your average thinking person (see my somewhat obtuse question above), but I’m definitely not going to question whether it’s a “mental disorder” just because it’s a different way of being. As far as I can tell, you can be a mentally ill transgender person just like you can be a mentally ill non transgender person (I’m not quite getting the lingo here, but I’m trying, and I’m not using scare quotes!), but being trans gender just seems sort of unlucky to me.

mafool · June 14, 2009, 9:03pm

I find it offensive that you hijacked this thread for your own purpose and agenda, CM.

I am not suggesting that CM be ignored because I disagree with the points she raises. I suggest ignoring her because she is so disagreeable in the way she does so.

mimk6 · June 14, 2009, 9:06pm

I am well aware that every abstract argument is someone’s life. Over on the Election Forum I followed a gun thread for a while and noticed that a number of people had experiences that made it far more than an abstract issue for them. In almost every CC thread, there are people for whom the discussion is very much their life. That’s why I think respect and courtesy and sensitivity matter a lot. In addition, for everyone who posts, someone else is reading and not posting and we don’t know what their life experience is.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 9:11pm

Perhaps I need to repeat myself, even though I just said this:

I don’t think anyone here would tolerate insulting another member by repeatedly saying they’re mentally ill because they support or oppose gun control.

claremarie · June 14, 2009, 9:20pm

“mimk6, I think it’s important to remember that what may be for you an abstract argument is someone’s life.”

Again, this is a discussion forum. No one is forced to post here if they are too emotionally fragile to handle frank discussion on an issue. 
IMO, Chastity Bono (who is a public figure who CHOSE to reveal her personal information to the media) is a victim – of a dysfunctional celebrity family, of various mental disorders, and of physicians or therapists who are using her as a poster person for their own advocacy purposes. That was the initial focus of this thread. If it morphed into a discussion of certain posters’ own medical history, it was the result of their own decisions.

DonnaL · June 14, 2009, 9:22pm

Claremarie, you continue to demonstrate your abysmal ignorance on this subject. For one thing, contrary to your assumption, MTF genital reasssignment surgery does not involve amputation of the male genital organ. A vagina, and the remainder of the female genitals, do not constitute mutilated or amputated male genitals. They’re a reconfigured presence, not an absence. And a woman is not a mutilated man. Whatever you and Siegmund Freud may think!

The result (unlike a missing limb) is also entirely functional, exactly the same as for any woman who (horrors!) uses her genitals in sex (with a man or a woman!) without the intention of getting pregnant.

No resemblance to a missing limb. There’s no creation of a “disability” or a dependence on others.

Also, how in the world do you know how “healthy and functional” the original anatomical configuration is prior to surgery? It’s neither, in many cases.

Finally – frank discussion? How do your posts constitute discussion? You never listen to, or acknowledge, anything anyone says. And you have never once demonstrated that you have any knowledge on this subject. Rather obviously, I do. A bit too one-sided for a discussion, I think.

With far more justification, I could start referring to you as the “deranged Claremarie,” based on your posting style as well as on the substance of your insane bigotry.

But I’m too much of a lady!

mousegray · June 14, 2009, 9:24pm

I only brought up the issue of gun control as an example of something that you choose your stance on (based on ideology, experience, etc), as opposed to something innate.

I’m just saying, why think “disorder” because one finds another’s life hard to fathom?

mousegray · June 14, 2009, 9:32pm

You are mistaken if you think your gross insensitivity is a “frank discussion”. You’re not interested in discussion, but only in passing judgment.
And it’s not an issue of emotional fragility, but of compassion. But I’m guessing you would diagnose that as weakness.

Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono, is changing gender

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