Drinking The Transgender Kool-aid®

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Drinking The Transgender Kool-aid®

Opinion - Global Warning

Lisa Jain Thompson

Monday, 30 July 2007 21:00

Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, the IRS, and TG Madness

Springfield, VA, USA. You have to expect that gender spectrum sociologists, who insist there is one BIG T umbrella that encompasses both the people born with Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS — a.k.a Transsexuality) and the vast ocean of gender variants in society, to drink the Transgender Kool-aid®.

But you certainly don’t expect your lawyers to swallow that babbling fountain of soft science and what passes in the modern world for deep academic thought.

When Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, a 57 year old woman born transsexual, underwent sex reassignment surgery (SRS), she deducted $25,000 for the cost of the operation as a medical expenses on the tax return she filed with the United States Internal Revenue Service (SRS).

The IRS disallowed the SRS, ruling the operation was cosmetic. How could the IRS come to that conclusion? HBS or Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is recognized as a disorder by the American Psychological Association (APA). ¹

Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

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The first group of suspects, the gender theorists, those experts in post-modern academia, write endlessly that gender is a social construct (i.e., man and woman are categories that have no meaning outside of the society that defines them).

Although, when I write this, whether the IRS or Ms. O’Donnabhain prevail is unknown, the handling of her case by the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) is suspect for several reasons.

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).

Whether you have a vagina or a penis (put crudely, a hole or a pole) is meaningless. There are no depths of meaning, gender is only on the surface: presentation is everything.

You are a man because you say you are. Reality is what you make it.

The second group of suspects is the Transgenderists, that army of crossdressers, the gender deviants and rebels, combined with a handful of true transgenders, who have bought what the gender theorists are selling and insist that they are who they say they are.

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?

This second group is behind the drive for multiple official identification (one ID with a male name and gender, one with the femme name and gender when they are out as Desiree´) and the demand to enter any restroom of their desire based on their gender choice du jour.

One of the key transgender dogmas is that there is no different between being Transsexual (with HBS) and being Transgender. We are all the same and they, the transgenderists, are transsexuals

who do not chose to have sex reassignment surgery.

The bottom line is, in the world of transgenders, the decision to have sex reassignment surgery is a cosmetic CHOICE, like the dress you wear on Friday nights, not a necessary medical treatment. In the transgender world view, people born transsexual are transgenders who have gone a bridge too far.

That this transgender non-operation option rationalizes what may otherwise be seen by an outsider as gender cross dressing allows transgenderists to claim

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

a claim which both belittles those with HBS and dismisses their real need to be treated with sex reassignment surgery.

The Court Case

Although, when I write this, whether the IRS or Ms. O’Donnabhain prevail is unknown, the handling of her case by the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) is suspect for several reasons.

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?

GLAD, in their absolute sureness and belief in the rightness of their cause and anticipating a slam dunk win over the IRS, went into the tax court without a full array of the weapons at their disposal. O’Donnabhain may still win her case, but it will not be because the GLAD attorneys fought a good fight. If GLAD wins, they will win because they are lucky, not because of the competency of their arguments; if they lose, they will have lost because of their own ineptness, and that ineptness might provide an opening for social conservatives to join with the great transgender army in the belief that sex reassignment surgery is an option only chosen by the crazy ones .

It’s time to send the great transgender umbrella to the junkyard and admit, one and all:

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.

Those of us born transsexual do a disservice to Dr. Benjamin, if we allow his life’s work to be swept away by the fashionable politics of the moment.

¹ The APA lists the following criteria for GID (HBS):

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.

The DSM-IV also provides a code for gender disorders that did not fall into these criteria. This diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (GIDNOS, 302.6) is similar to other "NOS" diagnoses, and can be given for, for example:

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

² Autogynephilia (AG) is the discredited theory that there are two, and only two types of transsexuals, one of which is associated with AG. Blanchard breaks down transsexuals into homosexual and non-homosexual transsexuals with the latter having AG.

Blanchard defines AG as "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman" and asserts that Male to Female (MtF) transsexuals who undergo sex reassignment surgery are the extreme form of AG.

Peer review in recognized Scientific Journals and further research have found Blanchard’s data to be erroneous and his theory without foundation.

Transgenderists remain the most vocal supporters of this disproven theory as AG supports the transgender position that those born with Harry Benjamin Syndrome are an extreme form of transgender who are fixated on obtaining needless surgery.

Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is a Co-Founder & Principal of TS-Si. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. She maintains another site, StarPoet.com, for her poetry and literary works.

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. Use the form below or email 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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..., Perhaps GLAD wants to actually lose, to have HBS wo

03 August 2007

author; web team member, I'm sick and tired of reading a

12 August 2007

I'm sick and tired of reading about HBS people being legally represented by non-HBS transgender advocates. This article highlights an evolutionary trend, originated and accelerated by transgender advocacy, that forces transsexuals (or more appropriately, those born with HBS) to be regarded as quirky commodities and treated as such. HBS is an inherent, life-threatening condition that cannot be equated with fetishism or exhibitionism or any other transgender category; nor is HBS a 'lifestyle choice', a sexual preference, or a passing fancy. It is an innate self-identity that contradicts body sex; it is predetermined in the womb, permanent, and irreversible. This concept is either not understood or is not accepted by transgender advocacy organizations. Thus they are ineffective at arguing HBS cases.

It is through the relentless, misguided, ineffective efforts of transgender advocacy organizations, such as GLAD, that HBS people remain stigmatized as GID mental cases. While the IRS is not renown for compassion or ethical behavior, they cannot be faulted here for acting as they have. Decades of 'trans' activities by those damned kool-aid drinking advocates who take shelter under the transgender umbrella has effectively wiped out any legitimate chance for arguing a medical necessity.

Until transsexualism itself is officially recategorized as HBS, until HBS does not appear in ICD-10 or DSM-IV classifications as a psychological disorder, until such time as HBS people themselves wrest their identity back from the transgender alliance, there will continue to be confusion, misrepresentations and lengthy legal wrangling at all levels of society, at every opportunity, and in every community. I really wish these high-visibility court cases were represented by regular attorneys whose sole committment was to their client's well being.

Oddly enough, in 1979 the IRS audited my tax return. It seems I raised a red flag by claiming my SRS as a medical expense. By audit's end the IRS clerk assigned to my case had found nothing amiss, had found no attempt to deceive or defraud, had not determined that SRS was 'cosmetic' and was apologetic for my inconvenience. My claim was approved. What has happened in the intervening 28 years to change that? Until that question is answered we will continue to be plagued by the unwelcome intervention of those kool-aid drinking transgender advocates.

Kelly M

Kelly

Gawd, you ladies do put me at a loss of words, Today I w

01 October 2007

Today I was informed that in California there is a move to disallow marriages of post surgical HBS. The law would in essence state, 'born one sex, always that sex'. Seems I heard of this in some court cases ... does Texas ring a bell?

If this is true then I can only assume it is in reaction to all the negativity that has hit the media of late in regard to the involvement of transgenders representing themselves as transsexual under the GLBT umbrella. The latest episodes seems to have invited the reaction of the religious who did not in the past voice opposition to those who HAD to correct their sex and they have raised their voice and have joined the radicals in bolstering their numbers in support of this proposed legislative. I must assume it to be in reaction to the outlandish behavior of others not in association with us except perhaps in claim but not substance.

How can anyone who is born HBS be part of an entity that gives support to all of those negative positions that are appalling, at least to most of us. I did not have surgery 35 yrs ago to enhance my possibility of sexual union. I did what had to be done to survive and sexual gratification was never the primary need. I wish others would understand that and not use efforts such as ours to advance their sexual delights.

Yes, I consider J. Michael Bailey to be a porn contributor and not an advocate at all. I am not a pervert, an AG, a TG, a sex maniac, a fetishist, a porn advocate, or any link to those who seem to support so quietly yet affirmatively the actions of groups that include us without permission. Yet at the same time we are demeaned by their actions and with a wink and a grin they make it seem we are joined with them. I not only speak of the 'T' at the end of the GLB but the whole of the GLBT who stand silent while we suffer and they exploit us.

Most of us have lives that are decent and directed toward a meaningful purpose. What we do in our bedrooms is our own business, a position most people also agree applies to themselves. No argument from me! But, and I say this with regret, the GLBT makes it appear to the public that we are part of and share in some of their members disgusting behavior as has recently happened in San Francisco. That is where I and everyone should draw the line; not stand silent as if quiet contributors.

I am a woman damn it and not a street whore which being attached to the GLBTg grouping makes it appear to society. This is but one example of how our connection with those that argue for orientation issues part with our need to be whole and live our lives in the affirmative. I will not be dragged down to the gutter just because I once agreed with positions I really had no connection with. Now I am slowly but surly becoming an enemy of those that espouse the filth that seems to be generating from that once respected source, the GLB ... not upon individuals but their grouping. LAMBDA started the insult by attempting to give J. Michael Bailey an award for writing a book that degraded us with his limited knowledge of what is and what is not. Now some are adding to his scorn of us by including us in the destruction of values that many of us hold dear.

They are now openly taking positions and advertising them in the most derogatory manner that is no different than spitting in the face of innocents. And innocents happen to not be strangers but most of us as well.

We are the ones to take the blunt force of the reaction to that which was generated by socially masked provocateurs carrying the umbrella with the transgender logo.

Diane L. Kearny

Diane L. Kearny

Lambda's consideration of an award for Bailry. , Diane L

02 October 2007

Jack, We have unpublished your comment for violations of

08 March 2010

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