Thursday, November 3, 2011

Matching Body and Gender

I've often thought transgender people are dealt a cruel hand by nature. It must be traumatic to be born in the wrong body.

It is good that surgery can now fix the problem. If you google the name of Alexsa Lundberg, you will find pictues of a good looking Swedish actress who was born a male but knew early on, she was supposed to be a female.

The crazy thing is that in Sweden, the law is that transgender people must be sterilized before they have the operation and they can't even freeze sperm legally. I thought Europe was a more progress place than the U.S. in dealing with such issues.

Anyway, here is a link to a story about her:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/02/transgender-forced-sterilization_n_1071328.html

I will be interested in your thoughts.

FD

9 comments:

  1. I'd love to know what his/her childhood was really like. Since I don't know anybody like this, I have a hard time having any sort of opinion on this subject.

    Love,
    Kitty

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  2. Kitty: From what I've heard, transgender people sometimes know they have the wrong body when they are 3 or 4 years old so their childhood has no impact. They are just born in the wrong body.

    FD

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  3. I'd love to know where you heard that...I'm not questioning the validity of your assertions, but just would be interested to learn more about the subject. I really know nothing about transgendered people.

    Love,
    Kitty

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  4. FD - I don't know any transgender people, but I imagine it would be very painful and unsettling knowing you were a different gender and forced to live as another.

    I've seen several documentaries on transgender and it is a very long involved process here in the US, and the surgery cost is astronomical :(

    Thank you for an interesting article.

    Take care. Sky

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  5. That is malicious and inhuman. I note that Sweden is not the only country to practise such eugenics.

    Very good article, though. I've never read the Huffington Post before. Thanks for sharing it.

    PL

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  6. Kitty: You can find much information on transgendered people on Google.

    Sky: Yes, I've seen documentaries on the subject. And it does seem to be unsettling to live in the wrong gender.

    Perfect: The Huffington Post has a lot of interesting lifestyle articles.

    FD

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  7. Hm not sure if my comment never got submitted or wasn't approved. I'll try again.

    I myself describe the mixup of gender/sex as being born with a female persona (mind, heart, soul) inside a male body. Transitioning helped fix that and life is so much better because of it.

    This person has a good FAQ:

    http://blog.transitioningpast.com/p/faq.html

    This site seems to be helpful as well:

    http://www.tsfaq.info/

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  8. I know several transgender gurls. I have never asked why or how long but they all took until their thirties to sort out what solution they wanted and made it work for them. I really can't understand the sterilisation thing, I would imagine it is fairly rare for trans individuals to create families as it can be so hard to find loving partners.

    I was recently present at a conference with a session on transgender medicine. I took away two points....firstly that transgender individuals do not often need to reach a medical solution. Secondly when they do, the surgeons find it much easier to change an uncircumcised penis into a vagina. Without the foreskin the vagina has to be constructed from intestinal tissue. Fascinating stuff and looks absolutely natural when the surgery is healed.

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  9. @doll - Why it takes so long can vary but a lot of the time it's because of it being so unacceptable in society. More and more nowadays, children/teens are getting to start transition...but 20 years ago, that was not accepted at all. As for sterilization and loving partners and families...actually....many trans individuals find partners and raise families...some even have understanding spouses that stay with them throughout their transition. Sterilization is just one of the things that happens along the way...one sacrifice of many.

    As for whether trans individuals need medical treatment or not....here's where things get different. TransGENDER people are often people who find themselves "in between" masculine and feminine genders..and they don't always require medical treatment.

    TransSEXUAL people are different in that they still consider themselves masculine or feminine but they were born with the wrong body parts. They almost always require some sort of medical/surgical alteration to better match their bodies to their gender.

    Finally, it's actually not true that circumcised penises require intestinal tissue. There are many many surgeons that have many different techniques but using parts of the intestine is a fairly old way of doing things. Nowadays if they really need more lining, they can just take a skin graft from somewhere else on the body.

    Sorry that was lengthy but I just had to debunk some of that. In the end once again, it just means that everyone in the world is a different person with different needs. No two of us are completely alike.

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