Former Stake President Excommunicated for being a woman.

[_Lemmie]

but to say that a person is literally born in the wrong body is asinine and not a conclusion that can be supported by real data. It's social "science" gibberish.

I don't dispute that he[the man in the OP] has mental problems, goes without saying. Which is my point.

WaterDog, here is some background on that quote you gave earlier from the NewAtlantis that seems to be feeding your assumptions that transgender research is "gibberish":

Last year conservative media began been touting a new “study” which purports to prove that sexual orientation and gender identity are not innate and immutable characteristics, but are instead things that can be “cured” with, well, something. Therapy of some sort. They’re deliberately vague on this part.

The problem is that this is neither a study, nor does it prove what it claims to. Instead, it throws a handful of cherry-picked results from a hodge-podge of sources, ignores other contradictory studies, and then comes to the conclusion “more study is necessary.”

This is exactly the same tactic used by the religious right to fight marriage equality in courts, which makes sense. A Conservative Catholic organization is the common factor in both this “study” and the attacks on sociological evidence that same sex parents do as well as straight ones under similar conditions.

Given the length and attention “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences” is getting, a more thorough breakdown of how and why this paper is misleading is merited.

This isn’t a study, it’s a very long Opinion-Editorial piece.

First, The New Atlantis is not a peer reviewed journal. It eschews the normal processes used in academia to ensure shoddy or dubious work isn’t published. The paper also doesn’t actually introduce any new research, which would make it more of a meta-study (if it were a study at all).

The New Atlantis is a religious publication, with clear biases... [it is] published by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative Catholic organization. On its web page, the EPPC states, “the Ethics and Public Policy Center is Washington, D.C.’s premier institute dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.”

As such, this paper is less about new information, as it is a set of apologetics for religious positions on gender and sexuality.

excerpts from: Debunking the New Atlantis Article On Sexuality And Gender

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deb ... 33072b36a4

The article continues with a lot of very well-documented information about the legitimate research that is being done in this area.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Again, WTF are you talking about?

No, WTF are you talking about?

For me, let's go back. Polygamy-Porter said, "He is, and never will be, a she." I replied by telling him "I disagree, artificial genital organs are already a reality. We don't know the limits of Science. I wouldn't bet on "never will be".

You replied "A fake vagina is a fake vagina, no matter how realistic it appears and feels. "

Now I am asking you "Would you tell someone with a prosthetic leg "Your leg is fake"? Do you go around saying "prosthetic legs are fake"?"

Can you please answer my question and also tell me WTF are you talking about?

[_Lemmie]

huffingtonpost

lol Lemmie, like I said, please don't get in the way of the adult conversation.

You always leave out the good parts! Your scientific source...

The New Atlantis is a religious publication, with clear biases... [it is] published by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative Catholic organization. On its web page, the EPPC states, “the Ethics and Public Policy Center is Washington, D.C.’s premier institute dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.”

I take it you are withdrawing your "source"?

There were some interesting points in the article refuting WaterDog's source that relate to EAllusion's earlier comments about care for transgender people:

As you so bluntly put it, facts don't care about your feelings. People who experience this are prone to receiving a lot of mistreatment for it and, if they aren't lucky, concerted effort on the part of others to stop them from doing logical things to fix it. Children who experience this are disproportionately likely to attempt suicide. It's so common, in fact, that it's a disturbingly large % of the cases that my partner sees at the child psychiatric hospital. The statistics on what this population faces, and the resultant rates of suicide attempts, is a silent tragedy.

Presumably, what you are saying is allowing people under the age of 18 to use hormone therapy, dress differently, etc. constitutes child abuse. You'd know that'd be offensive to someone who is saying the things I am, so I imagine this to be provocative.

The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence supports affirming care for transgender people....

In a comprehensive review of 34 studies on the effects of affirming medical care for transgender people 79% of the studies surveyed showed positive changes from transition, 15% showed weak improvement or mixed or ambiguous results, and only 6% showed negative changes from transition.

This is why every major medical and mental health organization has issued position statements supporting the necessity and efficacy of affirming care for transgender people. None of them have signed off on a model of rejecting identities. Indeed, World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), the foremost body of experts on transgender health in the world, has this to say about what Mayer and McHugh [in the article from NewAtlantis that WaterDog quoted] propose:

“Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past without success (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), particularly in the long term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly, 1965). Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deb ... 33072b36a4

Your partner, EAllusion, seems to be on the front lines of this, at least re: youth; I'd be interested in hearing any further opinions they have about affirmative care.

[_DoubtingThomas]

I did not accost this man.

I didn't say you did.

[_Jersey Girl]

I invite you to think with me...

Invitation apparently declined in favor of banter. So noted. I'm off the hook!

[_Jersey Girl]

Invitation apparently declined in favor of banter. So noted. I'm off the hook!

Huh? I replied. Ignore the trolls. I'm trying to ignore them. I'm taking your comments seriously, I promise...

Then reply to my comments.

Or let your posting choices do the talking for you.

Whatever you decide is okay with me.

[_SuperDell]

Was HE excommunicated by the Stake Court as a man or was SHE excommunicated by a Bishops Court as a woman?

[_Jersey Girl]

Then reply to my comments.

What didn't I reply to?

[_EAllusion]

Your partner, EAllusion, seems to be on the front lines of this, at least re: youth; I'd be interested in hearing any further opinions they have about affirmative care.

She works in acute care, so that is about getting people past immediate crises such as being actively suicidal. She's not involved in long-term mental health services for people who are transgender or gender non-conforming.

I worked with a developmentally disabled person who transitioned from female to male for a period of time. The social and medical process involved is complex, long, and filled with cautious, deliberate pauses. Affirmative care referred to in your link is just standard practice. Treating transgender people by trying to make them conform to the sex assigned to them at birth has no place in modern care and has all the respectability of gay raparative therapy. It's both morally wrong and yields poor outcomes. The goal should be to treat distress caused by incongruence or social stigma when present.

Water Dog is off the ranch if he cares at all what the state of psychological science is. I'm not convinced he does, but if he wants to dismiss a huffpo link because it's huffpo, he can peform some simple keyword searches on pubmed.

[_EAllusion]

it's just a funny way of saying they have mental problems.

This presumes that the problem is the person's mental state and not features of their body. You take this for granted when it shouldn't be taken for granted. The distress caused by having sex characteristics that do not match one's sense of gender can easily be thought of as a problem of having wrong sex characteristics. In fact, that's now usually how it is thought of. It doesn't follow that the problem is the sense of gender. The incongruence causing the distress can and more helpfully is thought of as a social and medical problem than disordered mental states.

If you wake up and find yourself to be a cockroach, the problem might not be your failure to accept that you are a cockroach, but that your body is that of a cockroach.