Question about gender change

[lougle]

If someone is making a transition to one gender from another, what does their sexuality relate to - their original gender, or their new one?

For instance, if a man is transitioning to become a woman, and is attracted to women, would that make them 'straight' or 'gay'?

If a woman is transitioning to become a man, and is attracted to women, would he then be 'straight' or 'gay'?

I'm likely to have to explain 'gender change' to my children, but it occurred to me that I really don't understand the 'gender' part of it at all.

I understand the physical processes and the medical timeline, etc. (ie. live as new gender for x period, medication, initial reassignment surgery, final reassignment surgery), but I don't understand how someone who has had gender reassignment would identify their sexuality.

I hope I haven't offended anyone - I may not have used the right terminology and may have been clumsy in the way I've asked the question.

If there was a biological cause, identical twins would always be both Trans? So how would you explain these twins?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073416/The-incredible-story-identical-twin-boys-14-lives-girl-hormone-therapy-transgender.html

If any of those steps fail such that a person no longer has all the male indicators, that person is intersex. If someone has a penis and has fathered children, they're male. The number of intersex people is miniscule.

There may or may not be a biological cause of a feeling of dysphoria about one's sex class (although it is hard to imagine how this would manifest itself if society did not impose behaviour and dress codes on people because of their sex). However none of that makes a male into a female (or vice versa). There may or may not be a biological cause for being gay. In my mind, it doesn't matter because homosexuality is a sexual preference, not a physical state of being, and homosexuality does not require anyone else's opinion or actions to validate it. Being intersex or being gay are not at all the same things as transsexualism.

I do think alternative treatments should be on offer for those who would benefit such as specialised counselling

I wonder if we're going to look back on this era of using hormone treatment and surgery to treat real, profound psychological distress and recoil with horror at the barbarity of it.

my body makes eggs, i have a vagina, uterus, cervix, have menstruated,reproduced, will go through the menopause, have xx chromosomes but i am a woman because i am a not-man

Yep. Womanhood as the slop bucket of gender identity. Just scrape it all in there, it doesn't matter. It's not like we were using our identity anyway.

Your argument might apply to some FtM but not MtF. If something goes wrong with the process of making a foetus male then you will end up with a person who is intersex or phenotypically female. It is possible to get translocation of the SRY gene onto the X chromosome but that is very rare and causes sterility in the vast majority of cases. It's pretty safe to assume that since you have fathered a child that you are a chromosomally normal XY male.

I wonder if we're going to look back on this era of using hormone treatment and surgery to treat real, profound psychological distress and recoil with horror at the barbarity of it.

YES! Especially in the case of children. I think this will be viewed like lobotomies or EST. There's something too close to eugenics about this intervention to support conformity rather than helping relieve the psychological distress.

kim I have read some studies which have indicated that trans people are not happier after they come out, or at least not in the long term. There are also people who detransition (which must be very difficult physically after the treatments.

I think this will be viewed like lobotomies or EST

Yes. I feel the same way about the range of surgeries used to "treat" people with eating disorders actually.

It seems so bizarre that as a society we can heartily endorse carving people's bodies up to alleviate their unhappiness. It also seems so obvious that if vaginas and penises weren't overlaid with so much meaning completely unrelated to their actual biological function, there is just no way that having one or the other could cause anyone distress. A vagina has no inherent meaning. It has a function but it has no meaning. It's not a badge. It's not a symbol.

Do I think there's such a thing as lady brain? No. Do I think that some transgenders could have something wrong with their brains that means their body doesn't feel like theirs? Yes.

So do you think it needs a 'cure' then? A bit like what certain people think about people who are gay...

And I wonder how future societies are going to look back on liberal feminists saying there is no discrimination against women as a biological sex when a woman dies in childbirth every minute.

Kim I know being trans is not easy for some people, especially the ones on HRT or who have surgery. I think it is quite easy for some people. Especially 20 year old "genderfluid"/"genderqueer" or whatever who decide they are a man one day and a woman the next depending on whether they are feeling ditzy or fancy parading around in different outfits. I have had serious real life discussions with people I would not consider extreme who have said I am a bigot for not accepting a genderfluid person as a man or a woman from day to day depending on what he says he is.

Women do take HRT and women are increasingly subjected to pressure to get surgery to conform. There is a barbarism in expecting people to subject themselves to that for the sake of fitting in.

Just a question to flora and people debating the same points, there are many women (born XX) who get boob jobs on the NHS. A lot of the time they say their small boobs make them feel 'less of a woman' etc.

Do you agree with these boob jobs then.. or do you think they should have more therapy to try and get rid of these thoughts.

Genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say

I do find this confusing as I have wondered sometimes, if the person feels they need to change their body as they have been programmed by society in to thinking they must be the opposite gender as they "cant be gay"?

Well the number of MtFs is much higher in Iran where being trans is more socially acceptable than being gay.