Post 225 really troubles me. The poster appears to be urging another poster, who has come to terms with being on one particular end of the “Brain Sex” ** spectrum (while his body is on the other end), to reverse his resignation and begin to doubt how authentic his response is, or how effective his response is. This is unfortunately what a few of us were mentioning on a different but similar thread, if not on this one.
It is a modern, and especially Western, malady that it is always best to reconcile every doubt and to repair every disconnect: nothing must remain unresolved. If everyone acted radically on every unresolved aspect of their existence and of their choices, no one would commit to anything for any long period of time, and productivity would be seriously endangered. Most people have radical discomfort and/or indecision about at least one aspect of their lives, and for a prolonged period. Ask any priest if he’s ever entertained enormous doubt, or any parent, anyone committed to marriage or a particular career, or training for that career.
Most people feel like doing or being something very different than who they are (or what they do) for at least part of their lives. Angst & doubt are part of the human condition. Sometimes it’s just best to ride it out. It may later become evident why one felt that way in retrospect, or it may later become evident that it’s time to change, but perhaps the indicated changes are internal, not external. Often the struggle or the disconnect is sanctifying: one discovers more about oneself (good, bad, or neutral); one learns to use a difficulty in a constructive way and thus transforms the difficulty into some powerful grace or insight for oneself and/or others.
Clearly I’m no expert on the thread’s subject, but I’ve lived long enough and known enough people to be able to admit that I’ve endured many things that I swore I would never tolerate, triumphed over many challenges that I was sure before they happened, I would be incapable of weathering without fatal injury to my happiness quotient. It takes awhile (years of being alive) to realize that one’s situation, whatever it is, does not control one’s happiness. One can be whole and integrated internally while enduring enormous difficulties and disconnects and even persecutions externally. We are not defined by how other individuals treat us or how society sees us or labels us. No matter what our situation – and whether we can do anything practical or physical about our situation – no one person or group can limit our happiness unless we allow them to.
It is perfectly logical to me (I’m well-read enough) that biological error happens on many fronts in the human person – from birth defects to physical sexual disconnects when one is apparently born one gender, biologically, but there is a physiological ambiguity that develops or co-exists – in terms of later hormones, organs, etc. Such situations would be utterly out of one’s control if they are truly physiological. I consider those to be objective disconnects.
That is a very different thing than psychological disconnects, because the subjectivity and influence/suggestion involved in the latter make it too difficult to assess how genuinely ‘disturbing’ those are, and whether/to what degree surgery would be a healthy response – i.e., how “radical” the response need be, if action is indicated at all.
**According to authors Moir and Jessel, I’m pretty far on the feminine side of the spectrum, or at least I have been most of my life a “woman’s woman.” (I’m happy to say that I am less extreme with each passing year, the better I get to know and appreciate men. I’ve had plenty of male encounters in my life, but even with brothers, fathers, buddies, boyfriends, and marriage, it takes awhile to get inside the head of the opposite sex, which is why gay relationships are overall easier/more peaceful: communication & understanding is way easier.) So I’m trying to imagine what would I, Elizabeth, do, were I to find myself having the same brain but within a male body.
I’d feel effeminate, that’s what I’d feel. Would I have an operation? Not unless male physical characteristics developed some time after my birth and I then wanted to return to my original, unified state.
It’s difficult for me to believe that there’s an epidemic of biological errors out there that makes surgery anything but rarely needed and rarely prudent.JMHO.
