Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, the IRS, and TG Madness

Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

In simple English, you are a man because you dress and act like a man; you are a woman because you dress and act like a woman (presumably while wearing lipstick and other make-up).

Today I am a woman because I dress like a woman. On Monday I shall be a man when I get back to work. Who knows who or what I should be on Tuesday?

who do not chose to have sex reassignment surgery.

I too have a medical condition, but not so bad as to need surgery,

• The lawyer representing Ms. O’Donnabhain is a female to male (FtM) transsexual. Professionally, he should have recused himself from the case because of his conflict of interest. His representation of her leaves the case open to the charge of special pleading by an attorney whose own personal interests are bound up in the IRS decision. A better choice would have been non-transsexual lawyer who would appear more neutral and whose arguments could not be dismissed as having a personal interest in the outcome.

An even better choice would have been to hire an experienced Tax Law Attorney. When you go up against the IRS, you want a junk yard dog defending you. Surely, in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area, there is a Tax Court Lawyer who would have taken the case Pro Bono. The choice of GLAD, a gay organization, may be politically correct, but the question is not whether O’Donnabhain is gay, the question before the court is whether SRS is a valid medical deduction.

• GLAD, by accepting the politically correct Big T umbrella theory, allowed O’Donnabhain to be associated with the transgender movement (the same ones whose public position is that SRS is a personal choice, not a medical necessity). This association gave the government lawyers leave to charge that the surgery is “cosmetic”, like teeth whitening, breast enlargement, and hair transplants. Gay indignation is fine, but the expert rebuttal was lacking.
   
• Referring to the surgery as “gender” reassignment lumps sex reassignment surgery into the hodgepodge soft science world of the gender theorists. Gender is only the surface presentation, subject to change on personal whim; sex reassignment surgery is the physical sex, the change is permanent.
   
• GLAD was unprepared when the government attorney brought up Bailey and Blanchard’s unsupported theory of autogynephilia. ²  The best GLAD could respond is that the theory is discredited but offered no expert testimony in rebuttal. Where was a licensed APA therapist, one experienced in treating Gender Identity Disorder? GLAD did a disservice to everyone with Harry Benjamin Syndrome by not being able to immediately rebut the statements of the federal prosecutor.
   
• The tax code states that cosmetic surgery or similar procedures are deductible only when they are needed to improve a congenital abnormality, an accident or a trauma, or a disfiguring disease. Harry Benjamin Syndrome IS a congenital abnormality that those of us transsexual are born with – our brain sex does not match our outward genitals; GLAD, armed only with the au currant transgender umbrella, was unprepared to respond other than to quote the APA and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV.

Where were the expert witnesses?

 

Better yet, where the post-op transsexuals who would testify how old they were when they first knew how it felt growing up in the wrong body, and how their lives have changed after sex reassignment surgery?

• People born transsexual, with Harry Benjamin Syndrome, are not transgendered. Whether gender has anything to do with societal constructs is immaterial.
   
• Brain sex becomes fixed inside the womb in the early stages of fetal development irrespective of the genitals that may develop later on during gestation.
   
• Transsexuality does not belong in the world of GLBT: Gay, Lesbian, and Bi-sexual is about sexual preferences, the freedom to pursue your desired sexual partner, not what sex you are. If the GL&B still wish to keep the “T” as respecting the historic place of Drag Queens in the gay movement, so be it, but those of us born transsexual simply do not belong under the great gay umbrella, and especially not lumped in and indistinguishable from transgenders and all the other gender variants on the politically correct rainbow spectrum.

• There must be evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification.
   
• This cross-gender identification must not merely be a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex.
   
• There must also be evidence of persistent discomfort about one's assigned sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex.
   
• The individual must not have a concurrent physical intersex condition (e.g., androgen insensitivity syndrome or congenital adrenal hyperplasia).
   
• There must be evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

• Intersex conditions (e.g., androgen insensitivity syndrome or congenital adrenal hyperplasia) and accompanying gender dysphoria
   
• Transient, stress-related cross-dressing behavior
   
• Persistent preoccupation with castration or penectomy without a desire to acquire the sex characteristics of the other sex, which is known as skoptic syndrome

Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website.  Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

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