Story: "Trans teen regrets his ‘Frankenstein’ transition."

[Rau]

So, yes, someone was indeed attempting to make the case that their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it is .”

No. If you believe that, please find a biological male experiencing gender dysphoria who thinks his genitals are those of a biological female!

Their brain is not speaking to biology - not denying the self-evident. Rather, it’s as though the brain has an expectation of the body, which it can’t reconcile with the reality. The reality is not denied. It is just found to be irreconcilable which causes considerable distress. That at least is the theory (as I understand it).

Of course, that’s “quite wrong”

I am referring (as you probably will know) to your conclusion. It does not follow from what has been put to you.

 

[Rau]

Wait, didn’t we recently have a thread about the ACLU’s statement that “There’s no one way to be a man. Men who get their periods are men. Men who get pregnant and give birth are men.”?

We did. That statement is based on the intentionally “sensational” trick of choosing to use the word “man” as a reference to one’s sense of self, rather than the ordinary use of the work which is about biology.

 

[Annie]

Rather, it’s as though the brain has an expectation of the body, which it can’t reconcile with the reality. The reality is not denied. It is just found to be irreconcilable which causes considerable distress. That at least is the theory (as I understand it).

Why is this treated differently when it relates to gender than when it relates to other body parts, ethnicity, species, etc?

 

[Rau]

Why is this treated differently when it relates to gender than when it relates to other body parts, ethnicity, species, etc?

What do you mean “treated differently”. Can you elaborate?

 

[Annie]

But at the same time, people are expected to welcome, say, teenage boys who think they are girls into girls’ locker rooms, etc.

We are told we ought not to use the word mother when referring to “pregnant persons” because some of them “are men,” even tho they are biologically women. Apparently the ACLU is not the only group to think it’s not just women who menstruate.

Earlier in the thread, someone asked why people are “afraid” of transgenderism. Maybe the problem is that it conflates sex and the new idea of gender to the point that one group is denied its own reality (sex appropriation?).

I do not advocate being mean to transgender people, and I see that the current best treatment that we know of may be transitioning to various degrees including surgery, but I disagree with the TG ideology that this is on the range of normal or that we have to allow people of the opposite sex everywhere they want to go.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

So, yes, someone was indeed attempting to make the case that their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it is .”

No. If you believe that, please find a biological male experiencing gender dysphoria who thinks his genitals are those of a biological female!

Their brain is not speaking to biology - not denying the self-evident. Rather, it’s as though the brain has an expectation of the body, which it can’t reconcile with the reality. The reality is not denied.

Okay, point taken.

Let’s revise the claim to…

…their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it ought to be .”

How does that answer my original point? What is the role of mind as arbiter of the truth? Does the mind have any say in what ought to be, or what is? The brain wiring just dictates what the mind must accept?

 

[Annie]

If someone suffers from the idea that they should be missing a limb, we do not say, yes, they are correct about themselves and we should should grant them the special treatment that goes along with only having one limb, like a handicapped sticker (unless they actually do have the surgery to align their body with their mental idea of it).

There is no movement to welcome white people into the black community just because they mentally feel black.

And I can’t imagine what we are supposed to do with someone who believes he is a different species.

 

[Thorolfr]

Rau:

HarryStotle:

So, yes, someone was indeed attempting to make the case that their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it is .”

No. If you believe that, please find a biological male experiencing gender dysphoria who thinks his genitals are those of a biological female!

Their brain is not speaking to biology - not denying the self-evident. Rather, it’s as though the brain has an expectation of the body, which it can’t reconcile with the reality. The reality is not denied.

Okay, point taken.

Let’s revise the claim to…

…their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it ought to be .”

How does that answer my original point? What is the role of mind as arbiter of the truth? Does the mind have any say in what ought to be, or what is? The brain wiring just dictates what the mind must accept?

To use another example, gay men’s brains tell them that they are sexually attracted to other men and they might experience romantic feelings towards another man. Such a man, of course, doesn’t have to act on the attractions and feelings that their brain is causing to arise inside their mind, but there isn’t much they can do to stop those attractions and feelings themselves from being in their mind. So, in that case, the wiring of a gay man’s brain is likely dictating feelings and attractions that the mind must accept, although the mind can decide not to act upon those attractions and feelings because of religiously held or other beliefs.

In a similar manner, a transgender person probably doesn’t have much control over the internal feeling that they belong to a gender that is not the same as their anatomical sex, also perhaps because of the wiring of their brain. All they can do is control what actions they take in response to that internal sense or feeling. It’s important to point out that we’re talking about an internal feeling or sense, not a belief.

 

[Rau]

…their “ brain is telling them their biology is not what it ought to be . ”

Well I think that is more in line with how dysphoria is explained.

How does that answer my original point? What is the role of mind as arbiter of the truth? Does the mind have any say in what ought to be, or what is? The brain wiring just dictates what the mind must accept?

Isn’t the problem that there is not one single unit of truth - or if there is - we can’t identify it. You’d think chromosomes should ‘rule’. But pragmatically, the problem begins & ends with the dissonance between the brain’s expectation and what is plainly there - not which one got it right. The direction taken to modify the body is not taken because of a belief that the brain speaks with greater authority as to what should have been - but rather the only identified way to ease the dissonance is to modify the body. Horrendous, I know.

 

[Rau]

If someone suffers from the idea that they should be missing a limb, we do not say, yes, they are correct about themselves and we should should grant them the special treatment that goes along with only having one limb, like a handicapped sticker (unless they actually do have the surgery to align their body with their mental idea of it).

Nor do we (not I anyway) say the same of the sufferer of a gender identity mismatch. The surgery angle is not pursued because the brain is correct - but because that might be the only way to ease the suffering.

I suspect there are folks who will argue about whether the body or the brain reflects “what should have been”. If I had to take sides, I’d probably side with genetics when that is unambiguous.

I believe there are people who have suffered so severely over a limb that they feel ‘does not belong’ that they have sought its removal.

 

[Rau]

But at the same time, people are expected to welcome, say, teenage boys who think they are girls into girls’ locker rooms, etc.

One of many social problems.

We are told we ought not to use the word mother when referring to “pregnant persons” because some of them “are men,” even tho they are biologically women.

Absurd in my view but God knows what awaits us in future.

I disagree with the TG ideology that this is on the range of normal or that we have to allow people of the opposite sex everywhere they want to go.

I agree.

 

[PetraG]

I only quoted a part of what Barres says and there’s more to his story than a simple dislike of the trappings expected of women. No need to trivialize the issue.

I also notice that you tend to contrast a person’s outwardly visible anatomy which you describe as concrete and physical and real with what is in their head which is a “fantasy” or something psychological which has to do with their “feelings” and is false. But what is in a person’s head, their brain, is just as physical, concrete and real as the rest of their body. You haven’t really addressed the possibility that a person’s concrete, physical brain might have concrete, physical characteristics in the way that it’s wired that make it identify as one gender whereas the rest of their body has concrete, physical characteristics associated with the other sex.

Strongly identifying with a group of people does not make you a part of that group. It just doesn’t, and no, it doesn’t matter how strongly you feel that it does.

Someone who has brain wiring that makes them really feel like they’re not the sex that they are have a real problem. They may even have an organic problem or a problem with how the structure of their brain has reacted to the social cues they’re expected to accept.

Feeling that you are some thing does not make you that thing. The feeling is real. We can exert some influence over our inner life, but we cannot manufacture feelings at will and sometimes we have feeligs that we can’t change.

The power of our emotions and perceptions do not make objective reality irrelevant. It doesn’t make putting on a pretense that fits the feeling into an act of acting out the truth. We are complex, we humans are, but no: physical reality is not irrelevant compared to our perceptions, even our perceptions about ourselves.

One area where this profoundly impacts other people is in the area of sports. Feeling like you are a female does not make you a female. You can’t compete fairly against women who didn’t go through adolescence as a male just because you imagine that you can. It may make you feel good, but it isn’t fair and defeats the entire purpose of allowing women to compete with other women instead of requiring them to compete against men as well.

It isn’t bigoted for women to know that plastic surgery doesn’t make a man who wants to be a woman into one of them. It is the truth. It is the person who puts on a persona and takes hormones and has plastic surgery in order to “pass” who is defying reality, not women who don’t believe that a physician can make a man into a woman. It is understandable that someone might desperately want to do that, it is understandable that it could pain someone that he can’t do that, but it cannot be done. It does not work.

 

[Thorolfr]

The power of our emotions and perceptions do not make objective reality irrelevant. It doesn’t make putting on a pretense that fits the feeling into an act of acting out the truth. We are complex, we humans are, but no: physical reality is not irrelevant compared to our perceptions, even our perceptions about ourselves.

It seems like you’re contrasting perceptions in the brain with the physical reality of the rest of the body again when the perceptions also possibly arise from a physical reality in the brain. And as Rau has said, most transgender people are not denying reality, they’re just trying to ease the dissonance between their body and their brain:

please find a biological male experiencing gender dysphoria who thinks his genitals are those of a biological female!

Their brain is not speaking to biology - not denying the self-evident. Rather, it’s as though the brain has an expectation of the body, which it can’t reconcile with the reality. The reality is not denied. It is just found to be irreconcilable which causes considerable distress…

The direction taken to modify the body is not taken because of a belief that the brain speaks with greater authority as to what should have been - but rather the only identified way to ease the dissonance is to modify the body.

 

[Thorolfr]

It isn’t bigoted for women to know that plastic surgery doesn’t make a man who wants to be a woman into one of them. It is the truth. It is the person who puts on a persona and takes hormones and has plastic surgery in order to “pass” who is defying reality, not women who don’t believe that a physician can make a man into a woman. It is understandable that someone might desperately want to do that, it is understandable that it could pain someone that he can’t do that, but it cannot be done. It does not work.

Again, I don’t think most transgender people are trying to “defy reality,” they’re just trying to find as best they can a way that they can live in their own skin and be somewhat happy. And this issue is very complex and I don’t think it’s tenable to think of being a man or a woman as a black and white, either/or situation which is an objective reality. Although it’s a rare condition, the case of women with complete AIS shows how complex the issue of sex and gender really is. Such a person has looked anatomically like a female from birth but has male chromosomes. What is the “objective reality” of this person’s sex and gender? Aside from not being able to have children and having XY chromosomes, they are probably just as much a female as any other female. And although the trans-men I know don’t pretend to be true biological males, I wouldn’t have realized they weren’t born male if they hadn’t told me. Their physical body might be biologically female, but I can’t say for sure that their brain is still a female brain despite how they look now but my brain is a male brain because I was born XY. And one of the things that most women experience, sexual attraction to men, is something that gay men also experience. Is the way that the two experience their sexual feelings radically different because their chromosomes are different? I’m not sure.

 

[PetraG]

It seems like you’re contrasting perceptions in the brain with the physical reality of the rest of the body again when the perceptions also possibly arise from a physical reality in the brain. And as Rau has said, most transgender people are not denying reality, they’re just trying to ease the dissonance between their body and their brain:

No, I am contrasting the reality of perception from a physical reality about the person that can be independently verified and exists independently from the perception of a single person.

Yes, they do talk about functioning parts of their own body as “not belonging.” (Why else would they want it removed, except that they deny that it properly belongs to them?) That is their perception, I’m not arguing otherwise. The part does objectively belong to their body, though. It is not expressed because of some disorder in the expression of their DNA.

Where did you get this idea of a “female brain” instead of a brain that gives the owner the perception that he (or she) is a female? If you are a male and your brain has the perception that some of your body parts don’t belong when those parts are only a typical expression of your DNA, how is it that your brain is correct?

Remember that we are on a Catholic web site. We don’t believe that whatever sexual desires we have are a true indication of our identity. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t ask to have the feelings. They are not automatically a correct guide to our moral life. Who on earth really believes that what we feel about ourselves must be the truth about ourselves? If someone is born with a feeling of grandeur, that means they are actually royalty among humankind? If someone believes they are a fine singer, then whatever they are singing is in tune? If someone feels that they are a good student, then their thinking is clear and rigorous? We don’t believe any of that. When it comes to sex, we often rationalize that our feelings ought to be a lodestar. What does this lead to? Adulteries, betrayals, and worse. When it comes to the rest of our feelings, we tend to be just a little less gullible.

The way we see ourselves is not a reliable mirror. In fact, we all ought to know by the time that we reach adulthood that it is almost certainly a distorted mirror, don’t we? Look around you–do the people around you have a correct self-image? Do you? Is everything that you most automatically want a reliable measure of what you ought to want? Is what you desire a good way to measure of your highest good? Catholics do not believe that!

 

[PetraG]

It seems like you’re contrasting perceptions in the brain with the physical reality of the rest of the body again when the perceptions also possibly arise from a physical reality in the brain. And as Rau has said, most transgender people are not denying reality, they’re just trying to ease the dissonance between their body and their brain:

No, I’m not saying that a person doesn’t really have the perception that they’re a woman when they’re actually a man. I’m saying that the perception is a processing artifact of the brain. It isn’t a reality, not any more than seeing double and then looking at your dog means that you suddenly have two dogs. You aren’t lying about seeing two dogs. You really are seeing two dogs. I can’t tell you “don’t see two dogs, there is only one!” and expect your visual picture to change! If you believe your eyes, though, you would be wrong about how many dogs there actually are. It is your perceptions that are incorrect. You really are percieving what you say you are, it is a debilitating misperception and it would be very hard to suffer having it, but your perceptions are false.

 

[Thorolfr]

Where did you get this idea of a “female brain” instead of a brain that gives the owner the perception that he (or she) is a female? If you are a male and your brain has the perception that some of your body parts don’t belong when those parts are only a typical expression of your DNA, how is it that your brain is correct?

I will reply to some of the other things you said later, but there is some evidence that male brains are different from female brains. For example, Cambridge University professor of developmental psychopathology, Simon Baron-Cohen, claims that he can use a functional MRI to distinguish male from female brains. What if some trans-women have a “female brain” that resemble the brains of other females rather than those of most males and this can be shown using a functional MRI?

 

[Rau]

Remember that we are on a Catholic web site. We don’t believe that whatever sexual desires we have are a true indication of our identity. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t ask to have the feelings. They are not automatically a correct guide to our moral life. Who on earth really believes that what we feel about ourselves must be the truth about ourselves?

Petra - you are opposing arguments that I don’t think have been put.

 

[Rau]

I’m saying that the perception is a processing artifact of the brain. It isn’t a reality, not any more than seeing double and then looking at your dog means that you suddenly have two dogs.

Processing artifact, wrong wiring - I’m not sure it matters what you call it. The debate is about what one may do to cope when the situation is severe.

 

[PetraG]

I will reply to some of the other things you said later, but there is some evidence that male brains are different from female brains. For example, Cambridge University professor of developmental psychopathology, Simon Baron-Cohen, claims that he can use a functional MRI to distinguish male from female brains. What if some trans-women have a “female brain” that resemble the brains of other females rather than those of most males and this can be shown using a functional MRI?

Well, yes, and your brain is different when it is registering one dog than when it is registering two dogs. It is a real difference. If a man has a brain that registers things as the brains of women do, that doesn’t make him a woman. That makes him a man who sees the world as women do instead of as other men do. He is really and truly different. He sees the world differently. He feels different. The difference isn’t even “wrong.” The difference in his perception of the world and his self-regard, however, does not make him into a woman. That is a very difficult hand to play, I won’t argue otherwise. The problem is that telling him that he is a woman simply isn’t true, just as it wouldn’t be true to be telling him that his same-sex attraction means that marriage between two men must be divinely-ordained or it would not be true to be telling him when he has fallen in deeply in love with a “soul mate” who doesn’t happen to be the woman he married means that he has to be with the woman he loves in order to be happy. Those are the kind of things people hear, now. They aren’t true. They may make people feel better about the unenviable burdens that they have to carry–which are real burdens and deserve real concern!–and the temptation to say it is understandable, but saying something that seems kind cannot actually be kind when it is not true.