Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
Springfield, VA, USA. I am a male to female post-op woman. Given the current state of the science and medicine, I am unable to become pregnant.
A generation from now that may all change and I would h...
Springfield, VA, USA. The internet is filled with lightweight crazies full of anger and arrogance, self-appointed arbitrators of cultural mores and political correctness. If you read the comments to the column...
Springfield, VA, USA. A strong current of post-modern fundamentalism runs deep in the Transgender movement, leading to an outright rejection of science and lubricating a preference for the safe, non-intel...
Springfield, VA, USA. Well we have heard from the Transgenders again. I'm not talking about the rank and file transgenders, but the capital "T" sort who act like they can make a serious li...
Springfield, VA, USA. There was a story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a pre-op transsexual (an HBS woman) who wanted to use the woman’s locker room, just like any other woman. (What woman wants to u...
Springfield, VA, USA. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), like The Bible, is a disparate compilation of many different types of books and methods of varying validity and applica...
Springfield, VA, USA. Two graduate students have scored an academic trifecta. They learned how to launch their careers via publish-or-perish principles, google the obvious, and cozy up to transgenders. Th...
Springfield, VA, USA. In an earlier column, I discussed the uproar among the District of Columbia’s transgender community over proposed revisions of the rules and regulations governing gender identity and expr...
Springfield, VA, USA. A key tenet of transgender theology is that the physical differences between the sexes are of little importance when determining if someone is a man or woman. Put more succinctly, sex is only gender which is only a social construct. Without society, in their natural state, the lives of men and women would be basically identical. Therefore, possessing a vagina is no different than possessing a penis: essentially, the effect of such possession is the same.
From this all else flows.
You are what you say are.
Men are women are men are women depending on what role is chosen before breakfast in the morning. Unless society or their parents force them, preschool boys don't pick trucks and sticks and rocks to play with and toddler girls don't gravitate to dolls and tend to talk earlier than boys.
Perfectly correct if you ignore the science and the research. This is what Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the autism research center at Cambridge University, and the author of The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain [1] has to say :
On the first day of life, male and female newborns pay attention to different things. On average, at 24 hours old, more male infants will look at a mechanical mobile suspended above them, whereas more female infants will look at a human face.
It has also been found that the amount of prenatal testosterone, which is produced by the fetus and measurable in the amniotic fluid in which the baby is bathed in the womb, predicts how sociable a child will be. The higher the level of prenatal testosterone, the less eye contact the child will make as a toddler, and the slower the child will develop language. That is connected to the role of fetal testosterone in influencing brain development.
Males obviously produce far more prenatal testosterone than females do, but levels vary considerably even across members of the same sex. In fact, it may not be your sex per se that determines what kind of brain you have, but your prenatal hormone levels. From there it's a short leap to the intriguing idea that a male can have a typically female brain (if his testosterone levels are low), while a female can have a typically male brain (if her testosterone levels are high).
But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Dr. Baron-Cohen cannot be right because Transgender theology says otherwise.
It's society, stupid! Not hormones and biology. Having a hole rather than a pole don't make no never mind. You are what you say you would be if it wasn't for society imposing all it's will on you with the help of mom and pop.
Here is an anecdote that proves a lie to transgender theology and underscores the difference between men and women, boys and girls. Biology, to a greater extent than is politically correct to admit, is destiny and some aspects of it will never change. Wishing it were not so will not right the brutally unfair outcome that adolescent sexuality can produce.
A woman teacher was assigned to a high school in a small town along the river. As the faculty restroom was on the other side of the campus, she normally found it more convenient to use the girls' bathroom right next to her classroom.
In the last stall, carved deeply into the metal box reserved for used sanitary napkins, was the single word “Please.”
Most every woman who reads that last sentence understands without needing to reading further. No explanation is necessary.
If there really was no difference between having a vagina and having a penis, there would have been no need for the girl to spend the time scraping her plea for help into a metal napkin disposal box. (Nor would I have had to put the extra adjective before the word box.)
The transgender theology does not admit to impediment
or impregnation for that matter.
I imagine there must be a whole section in the transgender theological treatise about where babies come from. From what I hear their leaders evangelize, I suspect it has something to do with storks (or is that too western civilization?).
Despite avoidance of the subject by transgender theology, women know what an unwanted penis can do to them. Women realize that, although it may only be a physiological artifact of being a female, when compared to male humans, most women have lower levels of aerobic fitness, smaller lung capacity, a smaller heart, smaller stature with a smaller muscle mass, and a space within them that a penis can be forced into.
Transgenders, most of whom carry a full complement of testosterone, believe none of that makes any difference and anyone of thinks otherwise is just playing into the hands of a society that erroneously perceives that there are significant differences between men and women, male and female.
How could we be so stupid! Of course women should not fear being raped by strange men! Male rape of women is a figment of overactive female imagination. There is simply no difference between having an erect penis and having a space between your legs that a penis can be forced into.
By 12 months, girls are making more eye contact than boys. Even earlier, at birth, girls look longer at a face, and boys look longer at a suspended mechanical mobile. Research has confirmed that the eye contact children make is in part determined by a biological factor: prenatal testosterone (as demonstrated by measuring this hormone in amniotic fluid). [2]
Some may worry that research like this stereotypes the sexes, that we should avoid looking for any differences. Stereotyping is not the same thing as the study of sex difference. The research simply looks at males and females as two groups, and asks why on average, differences are seen and may lead to important scientific advances.
Stereotyping occurs when a characteristic of a group is assumed to apply to an individual, and is potentially discriminating and harmful. Reasonable people understand that stereotyping should not be a basis for decision making.
Scientific research, however, does not stereotype but attempts to understand why individuals are typical or atypical for their sex. Why the differences, on average, exist between the sexes.
But none of this, of course, has any effect on being a man or a woman. A man with a penis is a woman because he says so. A woman bleeding from her monthly vagina is a man if she so says.
Male and female are social constructions of the oppressive white western patriarchy.
So sayeth the transgender theologians, so sayeth they would have us all.
But perhaps the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy and the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. We'll never know, however, unless we continue the research, meeting transgender theology head on with science.
Until then, it would be best if we don't let the transgender theologians hold center stage in the public discussion, attempting to unilaterally rewrite definitions, change our system of law, and alter society's customs to suit their unprovable, new age religious beliefs.
The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. Simon Baron-Cohen. New York, NY: Perseus Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0 7382-0844-2/738208442.
1. The Male Condition, Simon Baron-Cohen, The New York Times: Op-Ed Section (August 8, 2005).
2. Ibid.
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.
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If middle class feminists think they conduct their love lives perfectly rationally, without any instinctual influences from biology, they are imbeciles.
Crazy Sexy Cancer. This is the trailer for a documentary film by Kris Carr about her cancer adventure. It premiered on TLC and Discovery Health (Fall 2007).
Kris also authored two books, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips and Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor: More Rebellion and Fire for Your Healing Journey.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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