Replies to '10/29 Gender Confused Children'

Firstly I want to say that I agree with this comment. This email is further to what is said, and I just say thank you for it before continuing.

I've lived this and reading through this forum and seeing some of these shows I am really fed up. Who the hell do you people think you are demanding that I justify my gender according to your standards. Let's make something clear, this is _MY_ life.

So many times I have heard people use their ability to take their gender for granted as an excuse to be rude, condescending or passive aggressive. Who the hell do you think you are? So you take your gender for granted, well way to go you for being an unthinking superficial person who has never had reason to question the things you consider fundamental in life.

I once respected Dr Phil, I currently do not. I was victim to this reparative nonsense for my entire childhood and all it achieved was to strip me of my self esteem and self worth. Leave transgender kids the hell alone and let them be what they are and find self love. Where people get off thinking that the brain has some magical shroud around it that somehow shields them from hormonal and biological influences I just can't get over. Get real, life, our existence isn't simple. Subject a fish to hormones early enough in its development and even it will characteristically AND physically become like "the other." Mess genetically with them (or us) and create hormone in-sensitivities and the same happens. That's right, I forgot, we're made in God's image and aren't affected by the physical environment because that doesn't suit religious or (old style) feminist dogma and opinion must prevail. My experience of gender is that it is simultaneously absolute and not. How is that? Simple, My brain functions on multiple levels, some things are instinctive (like my tendency to breathe) and others are voluntary (like my tendency to breathe). If I choose not to, I feel unbearable discomfort leading me to let instinct take over, or voluntarily take a deep breath. I had the tendency to want to take a man's genetic material and want to combine it with mine and nurture a child inside me and give birth to it too, believe it or not, probably not for many of you because it doesn't suit your purpose and is not convenient for you. Deal with it, you say? Go tell that to a woman (or man) whose body has let her (or him) down reproductively. Tell the man not to have sex. Tell the woman to 'get over' her instincts. Perhaps not. Perhaps instead, go jump when it comes to telling me to get over mine.

On one hand it has been asserted, how can I possibly know what it means to feel female? Well perhaps I don't; but I'll tell you what, having lived my entire adult life as I have I have far more of a clue what that means to ME than you seem willing to allow yourself to bother comprehending about being transgendered.

So, my life experience has been different. How does that make me any less legitimate as a human being, worthy of consideration and basic human dignity. I read that other women take their bodies and gender for granted. How virtuous that must be. Has it occurred to you that perhaps transgender people feel the same way? It is only through petty smallmindedness such as this that we develop low self esteem through the two faced damned if you do damned if you don't attitude that if you're assertive you are masculine and if you're not you're a mere caricature. Perhaps the problem doesn't exist in my head. Perhaps it exists in yours. So a large number of people might be intolerant toward me. I am what I am and I am not prepared to live in a state of perpetual body anxiety just to adhere to your (or Doctor Phil's) simplistic either/or constructions of gender. Are you people of so little intellect that you believe gender to be a simple on/off switch? Why does it have to be a simplistic question of socialisation or biological? Wake up people, I am the sum of my biology and my life experience! That experience we call gender is neither independent of biology not socialization. The fact that different cultured experiences of gender, transgender people, and intersex people with physical ambiguities exist is testament to that. Mine has been different, great, Dr Phil, go get a life. I would not get on international television disparaging your life experience as confusion, so don't dare do that to me. In my experience I knew exactly what I was and I wasn't deluded that I wasn't different by virtue of my transsexuality either. I didn't choose it, that is the truth, but I tell you what, if I could, I probably would because I can not think of anything more frightful than to have grown up shallow and devoid of capacity to imagine myself in shoes other than those I have walked in. If I had to be transsexual to learn that, then I am thankful for that. What it is that you are so afraid of, such slaves to your own instinct to fear all that is different. Well, I have frontal lobes that are able to overcome that primal fear... even my pet budgies do when they learn we are not a threat. So what is it that has been indoctrinated in you that makes you limit yourself more than my budgies, or is it just laziness? I am guessing the latter, or perhaps it has just not occurred to even Dr Phil that there are other perspectives on this life that are just as valid and just as correct as your own that may be different and even conflict with yours. It is wrong to steal, what if it is medicine to save a life? I achieved that higher functioning quite young. How about you? Life isn't binary, and it's not a simplistic spectrum either. Has anyone considered that perhaps it is the constructed model that doesn't allow for exceptions, and not the individual, who is wrong for daring to not fit it? How about leave people be instead of trying to impose constructed models that limit your own comprehension on them.

What I consider dangerous is the lack of respect for the value of human freedom and the need to experience happiness in this life. I can only speculate that this is because you have never had the experience of being truly suffocated by oppression of it. Why I consider this dangerous, is because if as a society we allow ANYONE to impose their narrow perception of how things should be on someone else and deny them their happiness on the basis of what, 50%+1, then guess what, you've sold your own freedom down the river because someone one day could do it to you over something you value. I have one life and I am not prepared to live it in denial, self or otherwise imposed misery for you or anyone else.

There was once a man called Adolf Hitler who had some very interesting ideas about eliminating mistakes in humanity to create a perfect world. The only difference I see in some of you is that you have the temerity to blame God for your own gut insecurities and to assume that he speaks though YOU about others. If there is a God, I assure you, the last place he or she would reside is in my gut.

These kids need unconditional love, no matter what, and if you are unsure of that, ask yourself if your child would huddle quietly beside a church and pray that their suffering be resolved AND for a new family that would love them.

If I were to believe some of the attitudes people attribute to their God, it sounds to me like he is the most inconsiderate unmoving narcissistic sadistic moron who has ever existed, yet he loves me?? Get real, sorry, if there is a God and he loves me then he would not judge me for dealing with my pain. It could well be that on judgement day he might challenge me for not fulfilling my role to eradicate hate and challenge you for being judgemental and elevating yourself to the status of God. It could also well be that there is no man in the red suit delivering the presents and once we're dead we're dead, and I'll have wasted my whole life in misery, for what? Your narrow concept of "joy." Joy is escaping adversity to find happiness. I've done that. Have you Dr Phil, or are you just selling ads on your show?

I once respected you as thoughtful. On this subject, you have much to learn.... as did Oprah a few decades ago, ... boy has she come a long way! *Bows down in admiration*