(April 28, 2016 at 11:06 am)Excited Penguin Wrote: I have a very simple question, has it been proven beyond doubt that transexuals identifying as the opposite sex than the one they were at birth actually have the brains of the opposite sex?

If that is the case, scientifically, then I would have to accept that it's normal, and not simply a delusion, for some individuals to identify as the opposite sex. But I would have to know first that a man actually has a similar brain to a woman, if said man chooses to identify as a woman, for example.

Yes. However, there is no such thing as "the brain of a woman". There are only wiring patterns that tend to develop because of hormone levels during fetal development and early childhood development, in which you can see different activities/connections in the brains of women on scans, versus those of men. Like all things in biology, it is not a binary solution-set, but a range of variants.

It has been shown in initial testing that people claiming transgender "feelings" tend to have the wiring-pattern described, above.

I will link you to one example; my Google search turned up several. Do your own homework next time.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2...rain-scan/

But more importantly, why does it matter whether it's hard-wired for us to accept them as they are? Even if it was socially-acquired, or some other sort of issue... WHAT DOES IT MATTER? It's clear from the existence of Gender Dysphoria that it's traumatizing to them to be treated as society has taught us to treat them, based on birth sex, and they deserve not to be traumatized.

(April 28, 2016 at 11:12 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:

(April 28, 2016 at 11:06 am)Excited Penguin Wrote: I have a very simple question, has it been proven beyond doubt that transexuals identifying as the opposite sex than the one they were at birth actually have the brains of the opposite sex?

If that is the case, scientifically, then I would have to accept that it's normal, and not simply a delusion, for some individuals to identify as the opposite sex. But I would have to know first that a man actually has a similar brain to a woman, if said man chooses to identify as a woman, for example.

Yes. However, there is no such thing as "the brain of a woman". There are only wiring patterns that tend to develop because of hormone levels during fetal development and early childhood development, in which you can see different activities/connections in the brains of women on scans, versus those of men. Like all things in biology, it is not a binary solution-set, but a range of variants.

It has been shown in initial testing that people claiming transgender "feelings" tend to have the wiring-pattern described, above.

I will link you to one example; my Google search turned up several. Do your own homework next time.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2...rain-scan/

But more importantly, why does it matter whether it's hard-wired for us to accept them as they are? Even if it was socially-acquired, or some other sort of issue... WHAT DOES IT MATTER? It's clear from the existence of Gender Dysphoria that it's traumatizing to them to be treated as society has taught us to treat them, based on birth sex, and they deserve not to be traumatized.

Fuck off with the attitude, I never asked you to help me, you did so of your own will. I asked a question, I didn't ask for your shitty attitude.

It does matter if it's something they were born with or not and if it can be remedied, not for the rest of us, but for them, I would think. I couldn't give two fucks if a man thinks he's a woman or viceversa, it doesn't affect me in the least.

(April 28, 2016 at 11:27 am)Excited Penguin Wrote:

(April 28, 2016 at 11:12 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Yes. However, there is no such thing as "the brain of a woman". There are only wiring patterns that tend to develop because of hormone levels during fetal development and early childhood development, in which you can see different activities/connections in the brains of women on scans, versus those of men. Like all things in biology, it is not a binary solution-set, but a range of variants.

It has been shown in initial testing that people claiming transgender "feelings" tend to have the wiring-pattern described, above.

I will link you to one example; my Google search turned up several. Do your own homework next time.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2...rain-scan/

But more importantly, why does it matter whether it's hard-wired for us to accept them as they are? Even if it was socially-acquired, or some other sort of issue... WHAT DOES IT MATTER? It's clear from the existence of Gender Dysphoria that it's traumatizing to them to be treated as society has taught us to treat them, based on birth sex, and they deserve not to be traumatized.

Fuck off with the attitude, I never asked you to help me, you did so of your own will. I asked a question, I didn't ask for your shitty attitude.

It does matter if it's something they were born with or not and if it can be remedied, not for the rest of us, but for them, I would think. I couldn't give two fucks if a man thinks he's a woman or viceversa, it doesn't affect me in the least.

Nobody is talking about you as an individual, but in a bigger sample rate. THEY ARE affected by society negatively as a whole as a bigger sample of MORE humans because far too many treat them like shit. 

Same selection bias and sample rate error some use with economics and guns. You personally don't care, but you are still only one sample as part of a bigger sample.  Same stupid reason some moron will look out the window at snow and deny climate change.

Great that you don't care because it doesn't affect you, FANTASTIC. But other bigots do care and you are not the only person in the world. Those assholes DO affect LBGT even if you don't care yourself.

(April 28, 2016 at 2:27 am)Mathilda Wrote: It's also worth pointing out what going to jail for a pre-op transsexual means in Alabama.

It won't be a woman's jail, it will be a man's jail. So either the transsexual will have to spend their entire time in solitary confinement or will be at of risk rape on a daily basis.

To be quite frank, we need to fucking do something to reduce prison rape.  Jails need to be held accountable when it happens under their watch.

Ultimately, the notions that:

1. We must further marginalize a minority population due to the actions of a different population (sexual predators)
2. That we have any say in another's treatment or a lack there of for a medical condition

Are idiotic.

Perhaps my thinking is overly simplified, but I don't understand where this was a problem that laws needed to be passed to begin with (at least on a public level). Just thinking of strangers who don't know each other, but it would seem that this would only become an issue, if someone who was clearly not the right sex, was going into the incorrect bathroom. If unsure, then I might raise an eyebrow, but would assume that they where going into the correct bathroom. Was their an issue that sparked these changes in bathroom laws? A shower room may be a little different, but I think that if you don't have the appearance of the right parts, then there is going to be issues no matter what.

Also I am curious what the penalty was for simply being in the wrong bathroom previously.

The issue is really religious fundamentalists, feeling burned about how the gay marriage battle turned out, attempting to get back at the LGBTQ community by writing new legislation about who can use what bathroom. That's it.

There's no data suggesting that transsexuals pose a threat to the general public, there's no data showing a legitimate increase in attacks by predators posing as transsexuals. It's just people trying to legalize discrimination because they find some people icky.

(April 28, 2016 at 5:57 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: Perhaps my thinking is overly simplified, but I don't understand where this was a problem that laws needed to be passed to begin with (at least on a public level).  Just thinking of strangers who don't know each other, but it would seem that this would only become an issue, if someone who was clearly not the right sex, was going into the incorrect bathroom.  If unsure, then I might raise an eyebrow, but would assume that they where going into the correct bathroom.  Was their an issue that sparked these changes in bathroom laws?   A shower room may be a little different, but I think that if you don't have the appearance of the right parts, then there is going to be issues no matter what.  

Also I am curious what the penalty was for simply being in the wrong bathroom previously.

There has never been an issue about transsexuals going into the bathrooms of the gender that they identify with. As I posted earlier, more GOP lawmakers have been arrested for sexual misconduct than trans people.

Transgendered people are next on the hit list now the previous victims have stood up for themselves. The republican fixation with homosexuality only started once segregation ended. Now gays have managed to obtain equality, they've moved onto the next vulnerable segment of the population to demonise. This is a means by which they can win votes. For example:


Todd Kincannon, Former Executive Director of South Carolina GOP, Believes Transgender People Should Be ‘Put in a Camp’

e.g.

Quote:.@The_Illiterati I have no problem with gays but I hate trannies. I think they are disgusting freaks, and they are. Am I evil?

— Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) October 6, 2013

I’m totally ok with gays and I celebrate female bisexuality as if it were the Mona Lisa of genital sports. But transsexuals are sick freaks.

— Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) October 14, 2013

This is part of a wider campaign though. From the article linked above:

Quote:He later went on to claim that this was just an example of him trying to widen the “Overton window,” which refers to the range of political ideas that the public will accept. In other words, by saying, “Lock transgender individuals in concentration camps,” on might make the idea of simply denying transgender people equal recognition under the law seem more politically palatable.

I think religious fundies have nerve smearing transwomen as "rapists" when their own priests are the ones bending little boys over the altar all the fucking time

(April 28, 2016 at 4:49 pm)Divinity Wrote:

(April 28, 2016 at 2:27 am)Mathilda Wrote: It's also worth pointing out what going to jail for a pre-op transsexual means in Alabama.

It won't be a woman's jail, it will be a man's jail. So either the transsexual will have to spend their entire time in solitary confinement or will be at of risk rape on a daily basis.

To be quite frank, we need to fucking do something to reduce prison rape.  Jails need to be held accountable when it happens under their watch.

They did that, with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA, or "pree-uh"), passed by the feds in 2003 to make federal and state prisons accountable.

It is a miserable failure, and amounts to a sort of inquisition - they can threaten to lock you up because they got an anonymous tip that you were in danger. Inmates and staff, both, can do this. Anyone who goes to them for help is guaranteed to be sent to the Hole, unless they sign a contract that waives the state of the prisoner's rights under that law. 

Among inmates, it's a foul joke, said with an ever-present sneer... and to mock its uselessness, they will shout "PREA! PREA!" whenever someone is getting beaten up or stabbed-- knowing the guards will do nothing but fill out the paperwork after-the-fact, and it will get the loser of the fight locked in Solitary for at least a year. [Edit to Add: I should point out that guards do break up fights as best they can, but inmates will try to fight in the blind zones, and the guards aren't really looking that hard, most of the time.]

In my case, the jail where I fought my case kept me for almost 2 1/2 years in Solitary, in a mental ward full of people who screamed 24/7 as if being axed, smeared pee/poo endlessly, and said the most horribly violent things you'd ever wish to forget you heard, as a way of pressuring me into giving them information I was Constitutionally within my rights to refuse them (I had no such info to give, but wasn't about to tell them that, as in addition to the principle of the thing, they would have assumed I was lying and probably made it worse), by saying I was such a "prettyboy" that I was likely in danger in Gen Pop. I wrote dozens of requests to get out, and was ignored. They sent a cop and a psychologist by my cell every week to ask me how things were going, after the cop asked if I had anything to say, and when I said no and to let me out into GP, he'd sign another week of isolation. The day after I lost my trial, I was in GP.

From then on, I was in GP (the prison had no reason to pressure me, in that way, though after I started winning some legal cases against them, I began to see conditions of where I was held rapidly deteriorate), and had very few problems. One guy tried to drag me into a cell at one point, and I had to fight, early on. After I split his skull on a staircase, having "thrown" him by reversing his grip on me, I was "referred" by the prison staff to go to county jail again, to be charged with a new crime (it was quickly dismissed by the DA, as he was a known rapist). After that, I had almost no problems because I kept my company carefully, equally, and I worked as a Law Clerk (or "jailhouse lawyer", as some call it) in the library, and everyone knew I was their potential savior in the case of a Disciplinary Report (DR) that might send--or already have sent--them to the Hole. I was the specialist for guys who were in Solitary, their one source of legal access. I could bring them legal documents they wrote to request, and give them advice on how to file things and stand up for their rights.

I did know know any trans inmates, though it is policy for the inmate to be housed according to biological sex, requiring permanent Solitary or daily assault... there have been cases of one being put in GP and dying during a gang-rape. (Likely, a literal one.) However, I did know what conditions were like for many of the gay inmates in there, and the issues they had to deal with when trying to report an actual rape or other abuse. PREA was used against them routinely, if they reported domestic violence or similar threats, asking if they wanted to invoke PREA (and thus permanent Solitary), and if they said no it was treated as "must not be that important". They would come to me looking for help, and all I could do was give them a photocopy of a list of organizations they could contact, warning them that any communications they sent out of the prison, by phone or by mail, had the potential to be monitored unless sent to a registered media person, certain approved clergy, or an attorney, and that what they wrote could have ramifications. I cannot imagine what they must have to go through, truly.

There are many, many things about the US prison industrial complex that need to be carefully examined by our public, and radically overhauled to bring us in line with other First World nations and align with international law (we have not signed treaties that require us to treat our prisoners by international standards). We say "put them Away™ and off the streets", and we do not realize what it means when they get to Away. As long as the trash is taken out, we don't care if it's the mafia running the garbage trucks, etc.

Edit to Add: Do not be wholly discouraged. There are those who are fighting back, and winning. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/trans...prisoners/