Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: April 28, 2024, 9:44 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Sex Change
#1
Sex Change
I recently watched this video about James Charles Harries - a former child prodigy millionaire who, by now, is grown up and changed his gender into female.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lma7Lb6aMfs

I don't know why but it got me thinking about gender, what it feels to have a certain gender so much so that you feel you're trapped in wrong gender body? I mean I am a man, but I can't say that I particularly feel my gender, like I don't feel the color of my skin or color of my eyes. I mean what exactly do these people specifically miss from other gender? Most of these guys when they change sex they get big boobs, I guess to have a big cleavage - is that what being woman is? Having boobs and wearing dresses? How big difference is that? Sure people look at you differently, but do you feel differently? Lots of men have big "female" boobs it doesn't make them feel much femaleish.

Certainly there is a rare medical condition that a person gets born and looks like a woman up until one point when doctor discovers that she is actually he in the inside and it can get really serious. I've heard about a "woman" that didn't discover she was actually a man up until few days before her wedding after which her fiancee broke up with her and she started drinking. Perhaps that is different, because as a person of a certain gender you build relationships with other people on account of your gender and it is certainly hard to have a normal life if you look like a woman on the outside, but having a penis in the inside, because you are actually both things at the same time and at a certain point in your life a society demands of you to choose side. Those are extreme cases.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Reply
#2
RE: Sex Change
It's not about physical appearances. It is really hard to explain because it is a feeling which only those who experience it can fully understand. Think of it as a suffocating feeling of being in a dream and unable to wake up. You feel like you are trapped in a body that doesn't belong to you.
Quote:To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.
- Lau Tzu

Join me on atheistforums Slack Cool Shades (pester tibs via pm if you need invite) Tongue

Reply
#3
RE: Sex Change
A sex change is to change your sex so it matches your gender. A female transgender person, for example, with the biological sex of "male" is a female to begin with, before her sex change.
Reply
#4
RE: Sex Change
The "trapped" feeling is a real thing. The medical term for it is "gender dysphoria", where the person feels a sense of shock, revulsion or confusion about their body before they transition. Gender identity is just that, identity, yes you can literally "feel" male or female (or both, which I'll get onto in a minute). It's down to how well you identify with the genders. A transgender woman (even pro-op living as a man) will probably identify with, feel more empathy for, and find more in common with women rather than men. Most transgender people will have this dysphoria to an extent, although it is a matter of degrees. Some transgender people only have it a bit and so they don't plan on transitioning.

I don't talk about this much, mostly because people take it even less seriously now we live in the age of Tumblr (thanks to all their fucking ridiculous pissing contest special snowflake "identities"), but my gender identity is somewhere in the "in betweens". In fact, I actually fluctuate back and forth, I go through "male" phases and "female" phases. So yes, I'm familiar with how you can "feel" a certain gender. It doesn't even have much to do with gender roles, I'm the same personality whatever my gender currently is, it's just how I'm feeling at a particular time. Personally though, I don't feel much physical dysphoria, so I have no plans for drastic transitioning, I'm very comfortable in a male body and don't get that "trapped" feeling ever. I guess I'm more of a genderfucked "female man" when I'm on a feminine stage.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane"  - sarcasm_only

"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable."
- Maryam Namazie

Reply
#5
RE: Sex Change
I feel rather genderless but I totally embrace having a cock and using it.

I don't consider myself masculine or feminine outside the bedroom.
Reply
#6
RE: Sex Change
(December 12, 2015 at 7:48 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: I recently watched this video about James Charles Harries - a former child prodigy millionaire who, by now, is grown up and changed his gender into female.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lma7Lb6aMfs

I don't know why but it got me thinking about gender, what it feels to have a certain gender so much so that you feel you're trapped in wrong gender body? I mean I am a man, but I can't say that I particularly feel my gender, like I don't feel the color of my skin or color of my eyes. I mean what exactly do these people specifically miss from other gender? Most of these guys when they change sex they get big boobs, I guess to have a big cleavage - is that what being woman is? Having boobs and wearing dresses? How big difference is that? Sure people look at you differently, but do you feel differently? Lots of men have big "female" boobs it doesn't make them feel much femaleish.

Certainly there is a rare medical condition that a person gets born and looks like a woman up until one point when doctor discovers that she is actually he in the inside and it can get really serious. I've heard about a "woman" that didn't discover she was actually a man up until few days before her wedding after which her fiancee broke up with her and she started drinking. Perhaps that is different, because as a person of a certain gender you build relationships with other people on account of your gender and it is certainly hard to have a normal life if you look like a woman on the outside, but having a penis in the inside, because you are actually both things at the same time and at a certain point in your life a society demands of you to choose side. Those are extreme cases.

First off, "sex" and "gender" mean exactly the same thing in most scientific disciplines. The use by transgender people to refer to "sex" as biological and "gender" as psychological is quite arbitrary: they are simply two different disciplines that disagree on how to define and categorise gender. According to biology there are only two genders: male and female, and combinations of both, or the absence of either.

The condition you're thinking of is probably androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS), here's a picture (with mild nudity) showing three siblings with AIS that are genetically male, but show a female phenotype:

<snip>

Of course it's also perfectly possible for genetic females to suffer from AIS as well, luckily though for them it doesn't affect their phenotype.

You can't really "change" your sex, you can only alter your body in a direction that makes you feel more comfortable with who you are. But just as the case with AIS where a genetic male is quite literally trapped inside the wrong body, transgender people are also trapped inside the wrong body - although its their femininity (or masculinity) rather than genetics.
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK

The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK


"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
Reply
#7
RE: Sex Change
It's definitely a tricky one for people who are more progressive, as rejecting gender roles has been a part of the movement. The reality is, the push that men and women are the same probably went too far, and the downplaying of the differences has some of us a little more puzzled than others at the idea of identifying as the opposite sex.
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Transgender kids’ brains resemble their gender identity, not their biological sex Foxaèr 19 3296 May 23, 2018 at 10:06 am
Last Post: I_am_not_mafia
  "How to Change Someone's Mind" Wash. Post. article drfuzzy 0 834 February 25, 2016 at 11:48 am
Last Post: drfuzzy
  When is sex unhealthy BrokenQuill92 31 4935 July 29, 2015 at 2:38 pm
Last Post: MTL
  Origins of sex discovered: Side-by-side copulation Dolorian 4 1585 October 21, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Last Post: downbeatplumb
  Is it possible to change sexual orientation? Dystopia 7 1414 August 11, 2014 at 11:13 am
Last Post: Diablo
  The Dangerous Side of Evolutionary Change... Minimalist 16 5256 January 29, 2014 at 12:54 am
Last Post: Darkstar
  A change in evolution theory we come from sponges? Gooders1002 5 2115 December 13, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Last Post: Justtristo
  Male Bats Caught Performing Oral Sex on Females thesummerqueen 12 4664 April 2, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Last Post: thesummerqueen
  Climate Change as Driving Force for Evolution Minimalist 24 8708 January 6, 2013 at 11:12 am
Last Post: Minimalist
  More on Monkeys and Sex. The Grand Nudger 0 881 December 9, 2012 at 11:11 am
Last Post: The Grand Nudger



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)