Category: “Reality”

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Science catching up with the transgender conscience

 

This has always been the case – always – that science ends up confirming what we intuitively know. People who believe religiously in science often point to early civilizations as examples where science has helped humanity. These people point to these early civilizations’ beliefs that the world was flat, or that the sun went about the Earth as examples of these “backwards” beliefs.

But what these people don’t recognize is the process by which these civilizations came to that distorted understanding. For before those erroneous conclusions, civilizations had massive and complete understanding of the universe’s workings. Interestingly, at the same time, some civilizations which held these distorted beliefs, also had fantastic grasp on things like astronomy, and other topics that could be classified among the natural sciences.

But I digress.

Interestingly, those who most stridently deny “trans-ness” tend to point to “science” and it’s “facts” to support their denial.

Well, in the last few months, science is confirming what members of the transgender community – including trans attracted men who have come to grips with their trans attraction – have known for some time: That transgender people are NOT simply choosing to be trans.

This first study, shared in our IN YOUR FACE (see the video above) show back in March, reveals that transgender women’s brain structure features characteristics distinctly different from both male brains and female brains. From the Online News site Medical Daily:

[R]esearchers from the Medical School of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, decided to investigate this by recruiting 80 participants between the ages of 18 and 49 years. They were categorized into four groups of 20 members each: cisgender women, cisgender men, transgender women who had never used hormones, and transgender women who had used hormones for at least a year. MRI scans were then used to look for differences in gray and white matter volume of the brains.

It was revealed that both groups of transgender women had variations in the volume of the insula in both hemispheres. The insula is a region of the brain that reads the physiological state of the body, thus being responsible for body image and self-awareness.

“It would be simplistic to make a direct link with transgender, but the detection of a difference in the insula is relevant since trans people have many issues relating to their perception of their own body because they don’t identify with the sex assigned at birth,” said Professor Geraldo Busatto, a researcher in the study. In addition to the internal struggle, he adds a reminder that transgender individuals may end up suffering discrimination and persecution.

Several medical news sites picked up the study. We’re eager to see the study repeated in the US, but for now, the tide of medical research and other scientific approaches to confirming or understanding “reality”. In the meantime, we’re happy to see science beginning to get it right.

MRI screen shots
The cross-section in image “a” shows the left-hemisphere insula, which has a reduced volume in transgender women who have never taken hormones compared with the volume in cisgender women; the same can be seen in the right-hemisphere insula (R). Image “b” shows the reduced volume of the left insula in hormone-treated women compared with cisgender women, and again, the same can be seen in the right insula ®. (Source: https://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2018/03/brain-structure-transgender-people-investigated-study_

We here at The Transamorous Network have a broader perspective on transgender people, a perspective agreed with by most indigenous/aboriginal cultures. That is that trans people are a separate type of human being. Separate from “male” and “female”. This separate type represents an “exalted” state of human consciousness, one worthy of respect and honor. It’s no surprise that these indigenous/aboriginal cultures not only honored transgender people, but they also revered them for their closer station to the divine.

We know that will likely piss some readers off. We wonder if those who resist our perspective have swallowed the gender binary indoctrination trope, causing them to want to be seen as “male” (for trans men) or “female” (for trans women), when, in fact, they are neither. But in their “neither” they are something “better”.

The future is surfacing more evidence that those who resist the “transgender phenomena” are pushing against the very future from which the evidence comes. That has historically proven to be a losing proposition. That means, transgender acceptance is a done deal. Everything points to that outcome, including the strenuous arguments of those whose worldview is threatened by transgender people and people who are attracted to them.

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California courts side with trans people

Richard Simmons
It’s Richard Simmons

Slate Online just published an important article which should be shared throughout the transgender community. It accurately clarifies how the oddest allies of the transgender community, Richard Simmons, and his loss in a California libel suit has benefitted transgender Americans.

The article requires careful reading. Here’s the background:

A tabloid called Simmons a transgender woman. Simmons sued for libel and lost. What the judge said in his ruling was the key stroke which establishes a legal landmark for trans people:

For the first time in United States history, Keosian declared that misidentifying a person as transgender is not defamatory because it does not subject that individual to “hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy.” Keosian further explained that the judicial system should not countenance anti-trans animus, notwithstanding its existence in pockets of society. “While, as a practical matter, [transgender persons can] be held in contempt by a portion of the population,” Keosian said, “the court will not validate those prejudices by legally recognizing them.”

From the actual court document, which you can download here.:

The court does not mean to imply in its holding that the difficulties and bigotry facing transgender people is minimal or nonexistent. To the contrary, the court has reviewed the evidence submitted by Simmons regarding the deplorable statistics relating to transgender people….However, this court finds that even if there is a sizeable portion of the population who would view being transgender as negative, the court should not, in the words of our cousins in Massachusetts, “directly or indirectly, give effect to these prejudices.” (Albright, supra, 321 F.Supp.2d at p. 137–138.) Similar to the that court’s reasoning regarding the prejudices facing homosexuals, “[i]f this Court were to agree that calling someone” transgender “is defamatory per se—it would, in effect, validate that sentiment and legitimize relegating [transgender people] to second-class status.” Such a finding is consistent with holdings that misidentifying one’s race, medical condition, or sexual orientation is not libelous per se simply because there exist a portion of the population that expresses prejudice towards those groups.

The entire Slate article is worth a read. What it tells me is the legal foundations of the country are increasingly coming down on the side of transgender people. Added to this is the current administration’s hardline on indicting murderers of transgender people with federal hate crimes, and you have just a boatload of positive news about how society is shifting.

Good news all around!

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The difficulty of being the “woke” police

MUNROE - WARROR OR FOOL
It depends on your story.

Monroe Bergdorf. Bless her heart.

She’s been the topic of wild criticism of late, having offended an entire race of people. Some within that race are more open-minded to her criticism. Others, less so.

I can see her point. I can also see her critic’s points. Everyone has a story. Each is valid for the person holding it. So, how do we as a species, as a group of people, get along in the wake of all this story-making, much of which has to do with pointing fingers at what we dislike or disagree?

If everyone is telling stories and those stories are creating evidence confirming it, is it possible for us to all get on the same page? Is it possible for all white people to acknowledge their in-born privilege? Is it possible for all black people to acknowledge their victim mentality? Is it possible that you, or I, can tell a person he’s wrong, when the world is providing him evidence which confirms his stories?

For me, what matters is this: Are you happy in your personal life?

Whether you are trans, or cis, male or female, that question can be a guiding light for you. Answering that question doesn’t have to involve anyone else. For if you can find personal happiness, and tell stories from that place, your life will shape over time in favor of those stories. As that happens, people inconsistent with the happy stories you’re telling will fade out of your life and those who are “in tune” with your happy stories will fade into your life. It all begins with the stories you’re telling.

finger pointing hardly ever works
finger pointing hardly ever works

I worked several months with a person who defined himself as an activist, much like Munroe. The problem with being an activist is, it’s not a very happy life. This guy I worked with one-on-one was trying so hard to right the wrongs of society – in the areas of class warfare, wealth inequity, racism, sexism and more – all he could see when he looked out into society was a pandemic of problems, problems that, no matter how hard he tried, he acknowledged he was making very little progress in abating.

Ironically, he was making himself miserable! He was depressed, pessimistic. He had little hope for humanity. And, if matters for him weren’t bad enough, he was miserable over his eyesight which was increasingly failing on him. I find that situation ironic too: The more he focused on seeing all the negative in the world, the worse his eyesight seemed to be getting…

It’s one thing to want to make the world a better place. But you can’t do that telling stories about how wrong people are. Nor can you do that with your actions alone. All you do is make people defensive. You make them dig into their already negative stories, thus creating more of what you think must change. Not less.

Is there a place for activism? You bet. But there’s got to be a better way than throwing blame around claiming to have the high ground on woke.

 

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I didn’t choose to be transgender/transamorous

IMG_1062Actually you did. So did I.

What? Did you think it was some random selection?

Well, I have news for you: Everything happening in this physical “reality” is being agreed upon and acted out in a massive cooperative venture. And that includes choices you make about you, what you look like, your gender and more. In the same way you create your reality through the stories you tell (the thoughts you think) you have created everything else about you.

Now, you may think you don’t like the choice you made to come into the world as you are, but actually, you’re celebrating the fact in the eternal now that is your home.

Yes, you are an eternal being. I know, you probably don’t have any reference for that statement. Or maybe you do, and you rail against it because the reference refers to some kind of religious dogma you’d rather not think about. That’s cool because I’m not sharing dogma here. I’m sharing something you can easily verify with a little effort and guidance (guidance because you have to know what to look for).

Consider the possibility that you are eternal. What if this life was just one of an infinite number you have lived, many of which you have lived, and are living simultaneously right now. If that is the case (and it is), then it seems you as an eternal being would tire of experiencing every freaking life experience as a woman or a man or whatever.

Look a that again: If you are eternal, continuously, raucously, enthusiastically experiencing lifetime after lifetime AND you have had infinite numbers of experiences in the past, doesn’t it make sense that you’d get tired of coming into the experience only as a man or a woman?

Oh, consider this: There are no genders in that eternal state that is you. In that state, the original state from which you spring, you are all “genders” (infinite potential). If you are eternal, you have access to the amazing variety (i.e. infinite) of ways you could express yourself in physical reality. Also, presuming you are eternal, that means everyone (and everything) else is too. Along with eternity comes mastery of awareness and knowledge. Since you are not some closed-off being, separate from other experiences of other beings, you have direct influence upon other beings’ experiences. So all that interoperability between you and other points of being-ness has an infinite potential to generate variety….variety that you crave as an eternal being.

(are you beginning to get this?)

℘”What if this life was just one of an infinite number you have lived, many of which you have lived, and are living simultaneously right now.” ℘

So here you are, at the point of yet another life. You’re excited, thrilled even for another plunge into this framework that freaking fascinates you. You’re wanting to have a new experience though, one that will add to the immenseness of you. You’re also wanting to positively influence those other beings with whom you are in contact with and will continue to be once you in-personate yourself.

So, you choose an experience on the frontier of life experience. One that will push the boundaries of life experience for you and for others “affiliated” with you. These others (your family members, friends, lovers and everyone else you may encounter) have agreed to this escapade of yours and promise to make the experience interesting. But they are bounded by the stories you tell, stories which create experience after experience in your coming day-to-day journey that will be your life.

So you come into the world with an express purpose: to experience joy, “growth”, to have fun in the process, and to explore the frontiers of what it means to be you. Not you the transperson or trans attracted person. But you the eternal being having a life experience as a transperson or a trans attracted person.

This may make no sense to you whatsoever. You may have no reference to understand what you’re reading.  Many folks aren’t ready to hear this. But as I wrote above and in previous posts, with a little effort and guidance all of this can be verified by you.

But whether you choose to verify it or not doesn’t really matter. Your stories are predetermining your life experience moment by moment. And if you’re telling stories of suffering, mayhem, bad relationships, joblessness and such, that is what is stacking up to be delivered in your day-to-day life experience.

And that is why we focus on the stories you tell.

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Freedom and being trans…or not

The detransitionersA Seattle weekly magazine focused recently on a transgender story few want to talk about.

That is, unless your agenda includes seeing transgender people as a big problem.

The topic: detransition.

According to the article, this topic riles all fringe elements of communities affected by people who come out as Trans. The Alt-Right, radical feminists, even people I would call radical trans-activists seem to bristle at the possibility that people sometimes don’t know either what they want, or who, or what they are.

But that is life.

Some people grok their identity early on. Others take years. Others change their mind. Someone who changes their mind doesn’t invalidate decisions others have made who haven’t changed their mind.

Which is interesting because the anecdotal examples in the “take caution” perspective towards becoming transgender point to destransitioners as more than exceptions. They are examples that some people (maybe a lot according to these people) don’t know what they are doing and are therefore being harmed or unduly influenced by society, peer pressure, what they call a trend or worse.

But the article quotes Ami Kaplan, a therapist in New York who has worked with transgender, gender variant, and genderqueer clients for more than 20 years as saying that after two decades in practice, she knows of only one client who fully transitioned and then later detransitioned. Twenty years of practice seems to me to be a strong body of evidence.

In some cases, the transgender community may not be helping the issue. A few people, such as a person quoted in the article, claim that some medical practitioners, fearful of being seen as a gatekeeper, “lean toward wanting to help people transition.”  This fear obviously is coming from clinician’s concern about how the transgender community sees them. And, that probably has to do with their livelihood: if they make a living serving the community, certainly being seen as a gatekeeper could have income-limiting effects.

Says one detransitioner:

“I didn’t really feel like I could talk to my counselors about detransitioning in the way that I wanted,” she said, “because they have specific political views, and I felt like if I said I had these criticisms of the whole concept of transitioning, they would have thought I was being brainwashed by transphobic bigots or whatever.”

 

The world is a big place. There are a lot of people in it. That means a lot of stories. This article has a lot to say to those open-minded enough to read it. Ultimately freedom-to-be seems to be the key here: while our society pushes against us in so many ways, ultimately, people must come to the point where “I am free to choose” is the guiding light of their life experience.

Read the full article. It’s worth it.