Answering Trans questions re: Blog post April 10th

[Adrian colby]

After reading the blog post from April 10th, I wanted to offer my direct experience of being born with a gender disorder. I don't know how I am going to react but I am open and willing to answer questions as honestly and unbiased as possible about my experience and how it has affected different aspects of life including social, personal development, and endeavoring to understand reality. I will have to leave it up to your discernment as to whether this information is of any use at all. It is, after all, just one perspective but it comes from a place of being stuck in the middle of anger from the liberal/ activists including other trans/LGBT people and the dismissal of my existence as some kind of conspiracy according to people within my spiritual community. ( people from both sides cannot see through the issue because they are so identified with their own worldviews and cannot rise above the 'us versus them' mentality to see there maybe multiple things going on at the same time)

I do not identify as transgender but that seems to be the term used by both social and medical circles.( I have my quams as to its use as it's not morphologically correct)

I'm a man.  Nobody in my life apart from my wife and immediate family know about my condition.

I was the youngest in my country to be diagnosed at the time (late 90's). I am now 40. I have a few differences from regular trans people regarding my initial biology but I have had full treatment. There were things I was not happy about regarding the medical profession but since everything was over and done with, I've been perfectly happy with my life. I wouldn't change a thing as the condition itself (owing to placing me outside societal norms) acted as a catalyst to the awakening process... first to conceptual constructs and then onto observing consciousness itself.

I cannot answer questions that would identify me as it can potentially affect not just myself but the other people in my life so I'm sorry in advance if I seem a luff to some questions.

Likewise, I am referring to myself as Adrian even though that is not my name. I hope that is ok? @Leo Gura

 

 

[Leo Gura]

48 minutes ago, Adrian colby said:

I hope that is ok?

Sure. Say what you wanna say. I like hearing new perspectives on the issue which isn't just dogma.

Edited May 29, 2023 by Leo Gura

[CARDOZZO]

@Adrian colby How your relationship with your wife works? (Emotionally/Sexually)

Do you feel desire for her as a man/woman? 

Sorry if I’m being extremely naive, but I really don’t know how your direct experience works.

Edited May 29, 2023 by CARDOZZO

[LSD-Rumi]

@Adrian colby Do you think you could have learned to accept your biological sex and pursued your life as a woman? What if hormonal treatment didn't work properly and left you in a weird (ugly) shape? You had penial reconstruction, right? does your penis work properly? Did you have kids?

Edited May 29, 2023 by LSD-Rumi

[Adrian colby]

8 hours ago, CARDOZZO said:

@Adrian colby How your relationship with your wife works? (Emotionally/Sexually)

Do you feel desire for her as a man/woman? 

Sorry if I’m being extremely naive, but I really don’t know how your direct experience works.

"How your relationship with your wife works? (Emotionally/Sexually)"

It works exactly the same way as any husband and wife but that depends on the individuals in any relationship and their level of maturity, respect and self-awareness. 

Physically it is the same with the exception that erection doesn't occur naturally and there is no possibility of pregnancy for us. ( there are plenty of men who experience the same exceptions and receive similar treatments to try and remedy this). I feel the tingling sensation prior to an erection so I know when it is happening. I have full erogenous sensation in my penis and I orgasm from that stimulation 'I assume' the same way any man would feel it (to be honest, I would not know what that is according to a male or a female specifically, all I can experience is my own sensations. Other than the descriptions we offer one another, there is no way to know you are truly feeling what another man feels in the same way). 

I have a semi-rigid erectile implant. I used to have an inflatable implant to mimic the process of an erection but the implant was prone to breaking. I did not want to keep having surgeries to replace it each time it broke. It's not perfect and it never will be but there is ongoing development happening with implants and also stem cell tissue/structure growth for men who have had amputation/cancers or underdevelopment ( I doubt this will be perfected in my lifetime )  I don't put so much importance into only one aspect of my life. if I were to focus intently on that as a defining factor of my identity, I would slump into a depression. I am more than just a penis, I am an entire experience of ones self relative to others. My own personal experience goes beyond the concept of a 'man' and can become confusing to the reader owing to my discrepency between the normal cultural concepts and experience of a trans person and pushing beyond that with consciousness work where the idea of a man and the underlying biology collapses altogether.

"Do you feel desire for her as a man/woman? "

Desire is something that I would have felt in my formative years. Something I would describe as being an inexperienced teenage boy influenced by porn, role models, and cultural expectations of what it means to be a man and I found that in hindsight to be damaging. When I brought those expectations into a relationship, I found myself imposing it on both myself and her and getting angry and hurt when she didn't react the way I expected her to. While desire is necessary for experience in life, it is ultimately unquenchable and selfish. Before that realization, I was trying to manipulate everything to conform to my own 'conditioned' expectations of reality and getting frustrated when that didn't happen. When I started doing my consciousness work, my desire to satisfy myself in a relationship eventually disappeared and was replaced with unconditional love. She does not need to do or be anything for me to love her. I accept her as she is and importantly I also extend the same acceptance to myself. Once I found satisfaction from within my own being, I found that I could extend that outward to anyone and anything giving me a sense of peace and contentment. 

I do not desire her as a man or a woman. I love her as consciousness.

If I were a dimly aware human I would desire her as a man.

I could not desire her as a woman as I have never experienced being a woman.

As I had never been with anyone before my wife, I have no comparison to offer. However, my wife was with others before me and she says that when she met me, there was no difference between me and any sexually frustrated, immature teenage boy. She said the way that I thought and behaved was indistinguishable from any typical expectation of a man. When she slept with me she said there was no difference. But she said there was a distinct change when I started doing consciousness work. As I became more aware of my own damaging behaviors and the thought processes, I began to tear myself apart and rebuild myself. essentially having a complete personality change which upset her at first but realized I had become more respectful, compassionate, and understanding... but above all the biggest change was my own personal confidence, honesty and integrity. This was very attractive for her.  She now says I'm more of a man than anyone she's ever been with and its not because of my penis. it's because of my behavior. 

Sex is not the foundation of our relationship nor does it determine a fault in me if she doesn't desire me rather it is something that naturally occurs out of our mutual love for one another( not human love/desire but unconditional love). When that love reaches a stage where we bond and both our 'selfs' melt away, we become one being experiencing itself in ecstatic bliss. She says she has never experienced this before now (of course she's biased but this is significant as she has had difficult sexual experiences in the past and a problem with intimacy as a result of her upbringing. She was not abused in any way rather it was a lack of physical embrace and support from her parents that left her with a long-lasting claustrophobia in intimate circumstances. This is now gone owing to the work I put into myself and has allowed her the space to open up and grow into her own sexuality). you cannot force someone to carry out your expectations. you have to accept them as they are and allow them to be. That is actual love. That space made her feel safe and unpressured and allowed her to heal herself. our relationship has grown stronger 10 fold.

she did not marry me because I was a man or a woman but because I was now living as  'genuinely' me.

"Sorry if I’m being extremely naive, but I really don’t know how your direct experience works."

Don't apologize. There is nothing wrong with questions to gain knowledge and understanding. A person who takes offense to a question still has work to do on themselves.

[Adrian colby]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sure. Say what you wanna say. I like hearing new perspectives on the issue which isn't just dogma.

If you perceive dogma in what I say then please let me know. This is as much a learning exercise for me.

[Adrian colby]

12 hours ago, LSD-Rumi said:

@Adrian colby Do you think you could have learned to accept your biological sex and pursued your life as a woman? What if hormonal treatment didn't work properly and left you in a weird (ugly) shape? You had penial reconstruction, right? does your penis work properly? Did you have kids?

"Do you think you could have learned to accept your biological sex and pursued your life as a woman?"

I do accept my biological sex and this is the reason that I am 'not' identified as a woman.

I was not born biologically female or biologically male but somewhere on a spectrum between the two. I had several years of doctors medicating me with female hormones and anti-depressants, trying to force me to adopt the female gender but it ended in a suicide attempt. Had 'they' known or bothered to test my biological sex and accepted it, then this would never have happened.

It turned out I had gonadal dysgenesis. Although I had female genitalia from the outside, I was underdeveloped on the inside. The uterus was not an average size, one ovary was missing and the other seemed normal. This was not linked to transgenderism, it was still considered underdeveloped 'female' and didn't explain the persistence in rejecting the gender role of a girl or a woman. The Irish doctor insisted that the low hormone levels were the reason I was feeling de-feminized and had continued to sweep it under the rug using hormones and antidepressants hoping it would just go away. It wasn't till I attended a gender team in Europe that I first heard the term Gender dysphoria or transgender.

After my mother went to the health services executive arguing that adequate services were not available in our country to treat me properly, she came home and told me there was a doctor in London who was interested in my case. As far as I was concerned it was just another doctor and I had already given up so that's when I attempted suicide. I stabilized in the hospital and was let home but instead of going to London, I was passed onto the European gender team at a university hospital that was involved in ongoing studies into the condition. When I traveled there with my mother they ran the scans again and discovered a 3cm growth protruding from the ovary and it was not producing estrogen. After talking with the team for two hours, they diagnosed me with congenital gonad dysgenesis and Gender dysphoria (AKA transgenderism).  I was immediately booked in for a full hysterectomy and ovaranectomy soon after that because of the possibility of oncogenesis/cancer). I was back in the hospital a week later having the surgery as the Irish hospital said they couldn't carry out the procedure by laparoscopy and would have damaged blood vessels and nerve ending needed for the genital reconstruction surgery in the future. They would not consider starting gender realignment surgery as it was protocol that I attend the clinic at least three times over the space of two years and satisfy that I was living as a male full-time while on testosterone with no adverse effects. They agreed that mine was an exceptional case but even still they had to follow their protocol. I started my HRT and went into education for an engineering-orientated discipline followed by university. I was 27 by the time all the surgery was completed. I also involved myself in a genetics study at the same clinic in the early 2000's to discover that I had a genetic mutation that is only found in biological males. I was not ever satisfied with the level of explanation about my condition, how it came about, what exactly was known about it so I started exploring that myself. I was interested to find out another study showing that the neurological structure of the brain was sexually dimorphic and that when they looked at transgender brains, they were the sex that person was claiming to be. I never bothered going for any more tests or research because I saw it as just more attempts at me just trying to justify my own existence. I knew what I was so it was time to get back to living it.

 

"What if hormonal treatment didn't work properly and left you in a weird (ugly) shape?"

"ugly" is subjective. As a teenage boy in my head, I was pumped full of female hormones and expected just to accept it. I couldn't have imagined anything worse than the way I felt. When I finally started HRT with testosterone, it took a few months but I started to feel great. Whatever way it was interacting with my body and neurology, it seemed to be working just fine and agreed with me. ( it's not the same for everyone.... I know that). On the female hormones, I was lucky enough that my body didn't change. all I needed was a little bit of liposuction on the chest but I didn't need anywhere near a full mastectomy. I was booked into a local hospital for gynecomastia removal (something usually done for men who have hormonal problems or serious weight issues) I was just lucky enough that I escaped any scarring, gland removal or sensation reduction in the nipple. everything is as normal as you would find on a man. Even the team in Europe asked me why my chest was normal because most transgender people in for surgery don't look like that. Most guys actually put on weight to hide breast tissue and require a good deal of surgery to remove it leaving visible scars. even if I were 'ugly', If I felt ok and was able to get up every day and function, the ugly would be beautiful to me.

"You had penial reconstruction, right? does your penis work properly? Did you have kids?"

Yes, I had 'forearm radial flap phalloplasty. This option was chosen from a few as it was the one the gender team had the best success rate with. I asked them to disclose their failure cases and the professor in charge openly handed me the case files so I could read them. It was an active university hospital that continued to monitor its cases as part of the classes for its students. There were 2 failure cases on file. One person had a complication because their blood vessels constricted and cut off circulation and the penis necrosed. They were a heavy smoker who had been warned about the risks but didn't do anything to kick the habit and they also didn't stop their HRT testosterone and let it run out before the surgery. Testosterone is a steroid and constricts the blood vessels so it is asked that patients stop their HRT before surgery. The second failure was caused by a friend of the patient who brought in a bottle of whiskey and the patient drank themselves into a stupor and ripped their appendage off.

My surgery lasted 11 hours and I was in bed in the hospital for one month. I had to learn to use my bladder ( not penis)  bladder again so it took a while to learn how to go to the toilet again. I think this was because I had a catheter and my bladder muscles had stopped working properly. There were no complications with my surgery. I had an erectile implant and testicular implants put in the year after. The erectile implant broke so it was replaced with a different type but that was the last time I had surgery. I haven't been back since and have had no complications. My penis works perfectly for all of its functions. My wife says that it looks like a circumcised penis and feels like any other normal penis. I told her to be brutally honest about it so no bullshit.  She says it's indistinguishable from any other guy she's been with other than it's her favorite of the lot. If I hadn't told her about my condition she would never have known other than the lack of ability to have a natural erection but there are plenty of guys who can't and need various remedies for it. Shes is intrigued by the ball skin around the testicular implants as it's not a case of it looking real but that it is actually ball skin and she can't understand how they did that. I'm aware that there are surgeons out there that are not very good at recreating a penis so I could just be very lucky and landed with a surgeon with phenomenal skill. I have full erogenous sensation. I never experienced sexual sensation before I met my wife so it was a giant learning curve for my brain to recognize and respond to these. It was like teaching it to reconnect to a lost limb. It's hard to explain. I cannot and have never been able to have kids. My wife and I had discussed the possibility of finding other ways but when we were honest with ourselves, we decided we really didn't want any and are happy as we are.

[CARDOZZO]

@Adrian colby Wow… thanks for the openness ?

It’s really interesting how things is different from human to human.

 

[LSD-Rumi]

@Adrian colby Thank you for the detailed response.

Edited May 30, 2023 by LSD-Rumi

[Adrian colby]

5 hours ago, Judy2 said:

hey @Adrian colby , thanks for being here and for giving us the opportunity to learn more about your unique perspective and experiences:)

i am curious to hear how exactly you would describe your "reality".

was the idea that you were born "a man in a woman's body" entriely uncaused and just some sort of abstract fact you found to be the case one day?

what makes you think that you have never experienced what it's like to be a woman? which aspect(s) of an intrinsically "female" experience do you think you never got in touch with/never understood?

a deeper question that almost moves away from the idea of there being a condition at all.

speaking honestly, even though it was not always the case, my reality is perceived as the projection of imagination itself, a dream or illusion of a rigid and finite world of limitation within which to experience and extract meaning. The word 'reality' to me means relative to or the experience of how we relate to other and try to derive meaning from the interaction of forms. The more diverse the forms, the more meaning can be extracted. The more adverse the push of opposition, the greater the opportunity for overcoming and evolving, learning from the experience.

"was the idea that you were born "a man in a woman's body" entriely uncaused and just some sort of abstract fact you found to be the case one day?"

I never got the idea that I was born in the wrong body. I found myself in the body I found myself in and it acted as a catalyst for me to learn, adapt and evolve as the situation unfolded. it has been with me since the beginning of this experience. I don't reject the body I am experiencing rather I rejected the label or construct that I was conditioned to attach to it. I was not born with the label, I was taught it. The body didn't develop according to what is considered normal. it was just not running on all cylinders because it was being forced in one direction that it clearly wasn't suited to as it was going through its transition to maturity. There are complexities within our biology that we dont yet fully understand and maybe never will but I confirmed for myself at least one of those attributes found in males was a part of my biology. It can be interpreted in many ways and used by biased opinions but it is still there nonetheless whatever it means. I needed my body  and identity to be coherent to relate to others or to have meaningful relationships with others. I missed critical stages of development as a child and a teenager and that transition into adulthood because of this. When I perceived that I had no way of meaningful interaction, no solid identity and no one was listening, I separated myself from the experience and nearly ended it as I was getting no meaning for it. Was it because of me being this way biologically or was it because of there being no appropriate social constructs reflecting my biology that I could conform to to justify my existence within the culture I found myself in? our world is full of probability and what is most probable seems to occur over and over to create some kind of coherence or adherence but there are those who lie on the curve where the chance of mutation is rare but possible. I did not suddenly decide the fact one day rather I slowly noticed it unfolding as I learned to relate to others and differentiate others and the story I was told of how we should be did not correlate to what I was experiencing. it started as an intuition that couldn't be explained away but it grew into a story to justify the existence of my being as I was. Of course, as my curiosity grew, I was not satisfied even with the answer I had settled on then, I continued to question and tear everything apart until I was staring infinity in the face and that was so profound that my little life story wasn't such a big deal anymore. The pain and suffering, the self-victimizing, all the lack of personal responsibility vanished and it was no longer a trauma but a lesson. It was a horrible experience to go through living feeling like that but I wouldn't change it for anything. The lessons I got about life from it were priceless. If I had been born into the same situation at a different period in history, I probably wouldn't have survived.

"what makes you think that you have never experienced what it's like to be a woman? which aspect(s) of an intrinsically "female" experience do you think you never got in touch with/never understood?"

I can only go off my own experience and that is when observing differences it boils down to conforming behavior. Woman itself is a construct with an expectation of conforming behavior that draws a whole host of actions and reactions when relating to others and most of that is constructed from within a culture. Some of it derives directly from biological abilities but most of it doesn't. peoples behavior towards you changes if they see you as one thing or another. I have long hair (always have) so sometimes I get mistaken from the back and when they realize it's a man on the front the behavior changes immediately. It's interesting to watch. Because I identify as a man and that is what is perceived by others, there is a specific interaction that takes place that conforms to expected behavior. As I don't identify or appear as a woman or even female, people don't interact with me as such and so I don't experience what it is to be on the receiving end of that behavior. We may be wired to interact that way or we maybe conditioned to interact that way I don't know( there are plenty of neuroimaging studies into this showing differences but I have no interest in it anymore). I don't include my childhood years or what should have been adolescents into that as I rejected the label of girl so much I actually cut off communication and stopped interacting. The anger and the shutdown was instant. This was so harsh that I literally have no childhood friends. My social circle started in engineering class. My mother would say I was a very quiet child that got worse during my teens I was a shell with no substance. There was almost no one there. nothing to interact with. I survived by immersing myself in composing music and staying in my room doing nothing but. There were a few years when I cut certain members of my family off and didn't interact with them at all either. If I think about female physiology, I can close my eyes and try to imagine what it is like for a woman to have sex but I can't. I have never experienced it and I have no reference of sensation in that way with which to imagine it. I'm not in touch with it physically and I'm not in touch with it mentally so while I would endeavor to understand It is a far cry from being able to experience it. I'm not fully biologically and I don't identify so I can't.

I'm fully aware that if I go beyond all of that, the man/woman concept collapses and even the body is not identified, I am just being when I'm alone. Identity it seems to be a problem that occurs when relating to and interacting with others and how much you are attached to that identity increases or decreases the level of distress you experience when trying to justify it or not.

[Adrian colby]

12 hours ago, Judy2 said:

for you personally, what makes the label "man" (which is also something you were taught and it is also a construct) more suitable? is this entirely about your role in society and the way that you are being treated, as you described in response to my second question?

If I'm to go from what the studies are suggesting (owing that I have one of those aspects confirmed) I'd say it was more suitable for me because it would seem to be derived from the underlying biology and inherent from the beginning. There does seem to be a link between neurological structure and the way a person expresses themselves. What is missing is the explanation between the expression (the body as a whole system including cognitive function)  and the social construct (the interaction and identification of one's self relative to others or in differentiation to others and expectations that go with that). 

What it felt like was being trapped inside an avatar unable to interact with people because it was as though they were talking to me as if I were someone else. Like; perhaps I was mistaken and they were talking to someone behind me. It's something very subtle you normally wouldn't be conscious of but it is there. That's what it felt like. If I couldn't remain as I was or if people couldn't see my body as the whole system, then I would have to try and change my appearance in some way to meet the expectations of what I was inside so that others could see it too. I'm sure if there was a social construct that correlated to whatever my biology is on the spectrum between male and female then there may not have been a problem. If that construct is trans then I may have a problem as I don't identify with that (probably because there is a preconceived idea about what it means and the expectation associated with it is wrong or there genuinely is a correlation between male neurological structure and male expression and I am rigidly aligned with that ). 

If I am being brutally honest though, even now when I dissolve all those concepts and say I could easily wear a dress and not be bothered because it means nothing but cloth, I still would not opt for changing my body back. I can claim to be awake and know I'm God and still be that consciousness experiencing itself as Adrian in the odd but diverse way it came into existence. Adrian the character or identity even though it knows it is only an imagined construct would still not change itself back and would still have had the surgery or perished early in life if it wasn't an option. Take Leo for example. He has dissolved his reality and discovered the infinite imagination behind it that is creating everything and holding it in consciousness and that is what he truly is. On one hand, consciousness has imagined an entire world with perfect ideas and those ideas diversify out, Part of that consciousness attaches and immerses itself in the experience of one of those diverse ideas called Leo. On the other hand If the character it is playing called Leo realizes it is a character and can drop some of the limitations of its form, did Leo change his identity or anything associated with it when he realized he was less limited than before? no. He has the inherent ability to play with and change that around but he won't because part of the story that consciousness is telling about that character is that its biology is that of a congruent male and that is expressed as a man called Leo. Just as consciousness is also telling a story about Adrian. The story it tells is to justify its existence. All the studied attributes through scientific research are an expansion of those stories to support and justify the existence of the form or the character. Science is as close to observing, as objectively as possible, the stories of consciousness from a human perspective. It is us that project our subjective expectations onto the forms we see when what lies underneath may not be the case at all. I may have appeared female but if I were to be studied, it would unfold that I have biological attributes of both the male and female sex. I was not what I seemed. We used to think the sun traveled around the earth but it only appeared that way. It was not deliberately deceiving us rather we did not have the same understanding that we have now. It looks that way because that is how it looks to someone standing on a rotating earth. Our understanding and the resulting perception of it have now changed. The same is happening in western countries now as we've studied and come to notice that humans don't have a rigid sexual binary but a spectrum. It looks like only male or female from the outside but sex is more than just external appearances. The constructs, pronouns and identities that are appearing now are reflecting that expanded understanding. People are bursting out of a prior limitation And Jordan Peterson is not happy about that because it doesn't fit with his worldview. It is challenging to adapt to change if you are so identified with an idea that you are used to. I do understand his concern and he has a valid point in that not every person who is breaking their limits of identification are honoring or even acknowledging their underlying biology. 

While respective governments and education systems are trying to introduce and normalize gender variance so that society is safer and more inclusive for those who are, they are introducing it in schools at a highly influential age when sex and gender issues should not even be a concern to a child. The genuine cases are very rare in the grand scheme of things and the kids in my country are going home to their parents after hearing the fairytale-style bedtime story about Joe who woke up the following morning as Joan and wondering if this is going to happen to them too because it has now created an expectation that this is a normal occurrence. The children are much too young. They are still in the middle of their own differentiation process and they need years of direct experience to learn and navigate. Parents are feeling pressure from peers and culture to support the child for fear of being called a transphobe. Allot of kids in this situation are like the girl that Jordan Peterson was talking to in the video Leo put up on the blog post. There is a cultural conformity issue happening where so much attention is being placed on normalizing trans people That kids are starting to identify with the label because they are going through a normal but uncomfortable phase in life and feel like they don't fit in so they must be one of these.

So there are more than one type of person who is going through transition. The genuine cases that have a biological basis to it and teens who are being influenced by a new socially accepted identity or construct.

The difference between the time I went through my ordeal and now is 'influence'. I had no influence. I was not taught about trans. I had never met a trans person, I didn't even know what it was. I had no dealings with the LGBT till after I started my treatment and I didn't stay in contact. We had nothing in school about gender variance so it is not something I could have come into contact with and decided hmmm? I must be that.

Now it's everywhere which is bizarre for a rare condition....

 

Sorry for ranting, that was a bit long and off point.

[Spiral]

Perhaps I’m ruined by an unreasonably progressive culture. However why does sex matter at all? If I woke up as a girl equally attractive as I am as a man. My biggest gripes besides explaining this to friends and family would be having to buy new clothes and having a more limited options for sexual partner since I would be a lesbian.

Well periods and security concerns also. 

[Adrian colby]

6 hours ago, Spiral said:

Perhaps I’m ruined by an unreasonably progressive culture. However why does sex matter at all? If I woke up as a girl equally attractive as I am as a man. My biggest gripes besides explaining this to friends and family would be having to buy new clothes and having a more limited options for sexual partner since I would be a lesbian.

Well periods and security concerns also. 

Certainly and I would agree. The more conscious of a being you become, the less any of this matters because it becomes nothing more than a superficial appearance. Something to experience but not get so attached to. If I was still holding onto it so rigidly today, I would still be suffering with the mindset of a traumatized victim and have learned nothing from it. It's one reason I decided to come on here and answer questions. I'm at a stage of development where I'm not so attached to my own 'story' that I can contemplate it more openly and not get triggered by questioning. Before I started doing personal development or truth-seeking, I would still have been attached to my identity with the added complication of gender identity on top of that making me even more defensive of myself for my own perceived safety and survival. It was only several year ago I was a very angry and reactive person. Most of that is gone now.

 

[Adrian colby]

I thought this would be a good video if anyone was interested in the research that has been underpinning the condition. This is the researcher who discovered the anomaly in the brain of transgender people while looking into Alzheimer's. There have been many studies since.

I don't agree with some of the things that he is saying in this interview especially things like girls favoring dolls and boys favoring truck etc. as some indication of gender identity because it certainly isn't.

What is interesting is the raw data gathered from the studies before anyone applies a bias to it. People can interpret whatever way they will and the professor is no exception. It doesn't invalidate his findings and I do think it is important to notice the biology behind transgenderism seeing as it has become a highly politicized and polarizing issue. Most people are fighting from only one perspective that's based on their beliefs, biases, or pre-conceived ideas and have no clue about what has been studied or found underlying the condition.

It's threatening to the idea of identity and we know people don't like questioning their identity and attachments. People with the condition don't like their identity being attacked or questioned just as much as a normal person does but transgenderism itself pulls at the strings unraveling the idea of rigid identity anyway and I guess that's why there is such an aversion to it. Having the condition myself certainly acted as a catalyst in realizing there was no such thing as identity. 

I thought this comment below the video was well articulated so I will quote it here

"People are talking about gender identity because it's a neurological phenomenon that somehow got politicized. Chromosomes, although they somewhat affect the formation of whether or not you feel male or female, they are not the main driving force to why people feel comfortable socializing and / or sitting alone as the gender they're currently labeled. Prof Swaab's work shows that the brain and genitals differentiate in sex independently in two different trimesters of pregnancy. Gender identity is proven as a mental sex dimorphism by the neuron production in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis ( part of the hypothalamus). Those with a male gender identity (trans or biologically male) grow twice as many neurons as those with a female gender identity regardless of hormone replacement. Brains and bodies are complicated and sometimes they don't match up with each other. It's similar to how most people's hands inherently have different levels of coordination, hence left and righthandedness".

A great deal of variety can be found within one species but I will also put a nod to Jordan Peterson for raising concerns about the people who mistakenly identify as trans and end up the victims of misdiagnosis because they are being influenced by the issue being in their faces due to an attempt to normalize it for safety and integration of genuine cases into society. But he cant see beyond that and misunderstands the issue from a higher perspective. 

Somewhere in the middle of extreme liberalism that wants to be good and inclusive, that calls anyone that questions a case as a transphobe or biggot.... and the other extreme that thinks there is a conspiracy to neuter all the children, lies the truth that experiences itself through the likes of me, a genuine case, full surgery and perfectly happy with life and the misdiagnosed girl that Peterson interviewed who felt pressured by culture and the difficulties of adolescents. Both she and I are being dismissed by the extremes on each respective side. We are the ones caught in the middle of everyone else's bullshit. We both exist as unique experiences and we both need services and support at critical times in our lives. it's not one or the other. Everyone tries to push their point of view and no one at least rarely ever stops to listen to the ones actually experiencing it.

most of if not all the trans people and misdiagnosed people are still conditioned within the social matrix and also fight their sides to an extreme.

I find myself in a unique position to be able to see both sides and highlight some things from inside the experience itself and I'm greatful for the questions and opportunity to respond in here so far as it has allowed me to contemplate it a little deeper using those questions for direction. I have narrowed my own exploration down to a point that doesnt have a dot linking directly between biological anomily and social construct. somehow the biology expresses itself but as identity itself is questionable... how does that expression transfer into the social construct. hmmm?