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is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society.
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| Denying and Dismissing: What They Don't Understand |
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| Opinion - Global Warning | |||
| Lisa Jain Thompson | |||
| Friday, 28 December 2007 19:00 | |||
Springfield, VA, USA. Gender and gendering, the social and cultural categorizations embraced by post-modern theory, are not the reason that HBS men and women have surgery to bring their outward primary and secondary sexual characteristics into congruence with their brain and the innate sexual identity with which they were born. HBS (Harry Benjamin Syndrome — fka transsexuality) is a birth condition with physical causes, not a social construct or cultural imperative.
When I was four, I did not think
I would prefer to dress and act like a girl
or even,
I don't like being a boy.
What I thought, using the words I had available at early age, was
I am a girl.
Why do people think I am a boy?
At three and four, I had no glimmer that post-modernism would attempt to recreate human biology and the world around me into a series of social and cultural deconstructions. All I knew was my own personal, physical reality that I was a girl and something had gone terribly wrong in the execution of my genetic plan.
I say all this because when I do, when any HBS man or woman does, they are confronted by non-transsexuals who tell me that I don't know what I am talking about and only the non-transsexual really understands what I am thinking. When I reassert what I know to be true, and that post-modern theory ignores biological reality — my biological reality, I am told I am misremembering, just plain wrong, or consciously lying.
A simple statement threatens to disrupt the post-modern fabric
I am a girl
and all the fancy academic jargon cannot change that fact and their precious post-modern gender theories crumble into pseudo-intellectual nonsense if they cannot accommodate the fact that I knew by the age of four to be true
I am a girl
as are all the other HBS women in the world
We are women.
Female from birth.
We are not social constructions or cultural extensions of the patriarchy. Any post-modern declaration on gender is worthless if it does not consider and address human neurobiology and physiology.
But, to address human neurobiology and physiology requires a minimum working knowledge of the hard sciences — biology, genetics and genomics, medicine, embryology, neuroscience, and computational biology — disciplines held at arms length by Post Modernism, if not denigrated and denied by its proselytizing gender theoreticians.
If an HBS man or woman states that gender or gendering was not the underlying cause of their transsexualism or the driving reason they transition from one genital sex to the other, they will most likely be told by the post-mod advocates of gender and queer theory that they are in denial. Because the experience of HBS men and women out living in the real world does fit the academic theory, the lives and self-knowledge of HBS men and women are discounted and devalued by the academics whose careers depend on their theories being right.
I am not transgendered. HBS men and women are not transgendered. Our brain's sex identity was set before we were born. We are neither transgendered or part of someone's gender theory.
We exist and must be accounted for in any explanation that purports to understand and describe human existence. We exist. We know what we know.
Most HBS men and women are assimilationists. We are virtually indistinguishable from cradle men and women, fading into the woodwork of society.
If in our initial stages we associate with the transgendered community, by a few years post-op we have disappeared into our lives, loves, and families. We leave the transgendered community not because we reject or condemn their choices but because we realize, as HBS men and women, we have so little in common with them.
We are born with HBS, a physical condition we strive to correct. Once we resolve our HBS birth condition, once we transition, we no longer are HBS. We are men and women with HBS in our past, much as I am a woman with polio in my past.
As I am no longer a polio victim, I am no longer an HBS woman. *
Once we have come out, once we have transitioned, most, if not all, of the trans-related violence and discrimination ceases. The discrimination and violence we do face, we face as women, especially when we are older.
Our primary concerns are the concerns of women — our families, our jobs, the economy, the cost of health care, the shortage of moderately priced housing. Our short range concerns revolve around what we might be preparing for dinner, our sick children, the coming elections, the man or woman we met last night.
Little of this is a concern to the transgender community or gender theory/queer theory activists. Our life experiences, our day to day existences, are of little interest to them. Their gender and queer theories have little relevance to our lives as HBS women.
HBS men and women undergo sex reassignment surgery as a treatment similar to that done on others born intersexed. We are born physically intersexed – the brain of one sex, the genitals of the other – and that birth condition separates Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) from transgenderism. When the gender theoreticians intermix HBS men and women with transgenders under the transgender umbrella, they willingly obscure the differences between the two, much to the decrement of those of us born with HBS.
We are not gender queer. HBS men and women are defined by the lives we lead, not some theory promulgated by the non-HBS. We accept and generally conform to the real existence of the sex binary, male and female, men and women. Why else would we be driven to sex reassignment surgery?
Most "trans" issues do not affect our lives or political agendas. The gays, lesbians, and bisexuals among us generally support same sex marriage; the heterosexual HBS men and women may or may not. HBS falls across a broad cross-section of humanity as well as the full spectrum of political and religious beliefs.
In the end, however, we are not hostile to transgenders, or even to queer theory. We just are not them and never will be.
* I cannot speak for HBS men. TS-Si welcomes commentary from HBS men who can express what their experiences are like.
 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.                      Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 28 December 2007 20:01 |
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