Transexuals

[Violet]

I do have a question for Violet and Tara. I saw a documentary on transgendered people. One of which regretted the switch and eventually got reverse surgery. Is it possible for brain chemistry to change over a lifetime making sexual identity fluid rather than stagnant?

Yes, possible. Just as it's possible for your average joe to slowly over time become a sociopath. Likely? Not very, but we are not stagnant, and if it can happen it probably does to someone.

I will say this, only one of the transgendered in that documentary did that. The rest stayed with what the operation and were happy with it. I know that doctors do lots of rigorous pre-op mental conditioning to be sure the change wont be a bad choice for the person. But do we have research as to the ratio of success vs regret after the fact? I would assume that the "regret" ratio would be extremely low in any case.

I actually think the rigorous "mental conditioning" is mostly worthless. Yes, I agree that one should transition (maybe openly, depending) for a year prior to receiving the surgery... but for some of us (say... me), who have been openly living as our gender for over half a decade: it just feels like gatekeeping. There's a reason for the 'standard procedures', and that is one set of guidelines some person wrote once.

They aren't often treated as guidelines, however.

I've heard numbers as high as 10% from non-retarded people... and I've heard numbers as low as 2%. It's somewhere between there, and in an already tiny minority: they stand out a bit more

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But if you do a little research on the people who transition and regret it, you usually see one important facet to them: most of the ones I've seen have been influenced by fundamentalist religious groups. So I put those people in about the same territory I put ex-gays. I guess, since we don't have much in the way of hard-science that tells us what makes people gay or trans or whatever, it's hard to say with certainty that your sexuality or gender identity don't change, but I can say with confidence that prayer isn't gonna do shit to change it.

I would second this... most individual cases I've heard have been towards the following: Botched jobs, religion, and over social matters (married).

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You'd be surprise some of the stupid shit people believe. I mean, can you actually read the story I'm linking and take it seriously?

http://pfox.org/Former_Transgender_Tells_His_Story.html

I don't take that seriously. I mean... really?