Over the last 15 years or so that I have been on line I have evolved from some one who read and posted on various “Trans” Usenet newsgroups and internet forums to first a member of a number of “Trans” mailing lists. Some 9 years ago Tina and I started the Women Born Transsexual mailing list.
I started this Blog in mid February. Add to this some 40 years of experience since coming out. This means I have met hundreds, if not thousands of people over the years who have had their lives impacted by association with one or more trans prefixed words. I’ve read most of the major literature, a ton of biographies. Some much more factual than others and some much better written than others.
I have a pretty wide ranging knowledge base in a number of fields, something typical of those with life long liberal educations supplemented with autodidactism.
This means I’ve read a number of works regarding intersex conditions including John Money and Anke Ehrhardt’s Man & Woman/Boy & Girl as well as the more popular John Money and Patricia Tucker book Sexual Signatures: On Being a Man or a Woman. Another Book on the subject is Dr Richard Green’s Sexual Identity Conflict in Children and Adults.
Not only have I read these works but prior to writing this I went to the library and pulled them from their shelves. Now you might say, “But both Green and Money and Money are discredited monsters?”
I would agree with you except for one thing and that was their co-editing of the Johns Hopkins book Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment in 1969-70. They later drifted with times to far more conservative positions with the rise of the far right wing in both the US and GB. Green was probably never a friend to people with transsexualism but Money was.
In the early days of Sex Reassignment Surgery they decided if one were intersex or transsexual based on one of the cruder tests, a buccal smear and slide stained to look for Barr Bodies, the inactivated x chromosome found in females but not males. For obvious reasons the majority of these tests came back negative. Nonetheless many doctors including Dr. Benjamin as well as the Doctors at Stanford where I had my SRS looked at some of us and said, “There is definitely something going on here that our tests are not finding. You were too feminine before starting hormones for there not to be. Matters like pelvic structure etc.
But as early as 1970 Doctors had become wary because they had been burned badly in a case circa 1960 at UCLA by someone known in the literature as Agnes. Her case is documented in Harold Garfinkel’s book Studies in Ethnomethodology. For those not familiar with the story of Agnes, Agnes was a transsexual to female person who got SRS at UCLA Medical Center in the late 1950s or early 1960s. She presented herself as an intersex person with male genitals and “spontaneously appearing” female secondary sexual features. She claimed these secondary sexual characteristics just developed and swore she did not take any legally or illegally obtained female hormones.
She talked a good act and managed to get one of the first SRS operations that were performed at a major university research hospital in the US. Now I can understand why she did what she did as there were maybe a half dozen places in the world where one could actually get SRS in 1960 and many of them were iffy.
The doctors loved her. Oh, they wrote journal articles about her for JAMA and other prestigious publications. Then a year or two later Agnes fessed up, she was transsexual and those female secondary sex characteristics were the result of her having first stolen her mother’s hormone tablets and later forging scripts for hormones and were not “spontaneously occurring”. But the books and journal articles were already out there.
Now the doctors who had written them appeared to be either morons or dupes taken in by a con artist. Of course they failed to ask the most important question of all, “why?”. Why indeed?
The obvious answer is desperation at being born transsexual in a time and place when one knows SRS is possible but so rare as to bear comparison to early manned space flight that was occurring contemporaneously. Something you knew was possible but so rare as to appear impossible for you to do. Agnes did what she had to do, but she poisoned the well in the process.
All transsexual claims to being intersexed from that day forward were looked upon as being suspect. For what it is worth I can empathize with what those doctors must have felt. Agnes not only flat out lied to them when they were trying to help her but made fools out of them as well.
In doing this Agnes also selfishly damaged study into transsexualism as an intersex condition. At that point it was decided that transsexual and intersex were distinct condition and not overlapping and intertwining ones as earlier researchers had postulated
When I went to Dr. Benjamin and he examined me he observed that I had under developed genitals and was physically rather feminine. But that was pretty much as far as that line of examining me went.
I was receiving public assistance at the time and the social workers in Berkeley thought I would be a perfect test case to attempt to get the government to pay for SRS. The social workers saw me as completely sane and thought I was a great candidate to help set a precedent. So I was examined by four different psychiatrists who all found me sane. Unfortunately those were also the early days of Nixon and his killing of the War on Poverty and Great Society programs that were helping people with transsexualism become something other than sex workers. Instead of them helping me because I was sane and deserved rehabilitative help the new requirements of the more conservative government directives required me to be mentally disturbed and receive permanent disability.
As an autodidact and someone who was working at the NTCU the doctors with the Stanford program were open to discussing details with me and other of the more educated sisters that weren’t discussed with those who lacked the knowledge to actually ask the questions. They were open to input from those of us with carefully considered insights.
After my evaluative screening session with Dr Fisk. I asked him, “In your opinion, nature or nurture?” His honest answer was, “We don’t know. In your case and the case of some others we think nature yet with other people we think nurture.” He then asked me what I thought.
My answer was a bit of both nature and nurture and that I found it hard to not think it was physical with some of the sisters I met and at the same time a lot of people who came to our office seemed pretty crazy.
The thing was that with Hopkins in the 1960s and Stanford in the early 1970s the Gender Identity Clinics were not just places we went to for SRS. They were also research centers. Right from the start they faced a good deal of opposition from people who wanted to shut them down. The Benjamin Standards of Care and perhaps even the GID as diagnosis grew out of efforts to continue to provide SRS to people with transsexualism.
Quite a few doctors believe it is physical just as many people with transsexualism do. We don’t make elaborate claims of various forms of intersex that are contradicted by our lives. One of the biggest contra indicators of would be fathering children. Even those of us who liked boys and never became parents generally tend to not claim improbable intersex conditions.
In the 1990s a couple of people popped up and started appearing every where from the on-line world to the talk shows, magazines and the indexes of serious books. Those people were Cheryl Chase and Kiira Triea.
Interestingly they reared their heads about the same time the talk shows were entranced with Satanic Child Abuse Cults, The McMartin School in Southern California and the supposed million (or some ridiculously high number) of missing children. A number that would have factored out as a child from every school class room in the country and would have had every newspaper in America filled with little else than stories of missing children.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about all these infant sex reassignment surgeries. Heart breaking stories from people who would have had to have had this surgery in the 1950s or 60s. Supposedly vast numbers of people were operated on. Expensive complex procedures in a nation where sex reassignment surgery on adults was extremely rare and the techniques were just being developed
Do I doubt that surgeries were done? No… But I would pretty much bet no where near as often as Tirea and Chase who were then heading up ISNA implied they were.
I was on some of the same mailing lists as Kiira, along with Heike Boedeker, a strangely abusive European who came and went around 2000. At one point Kiira made some claims that triggered my bullshit detector. As a result I began doubting her veracity.
One of those claims was involvement with the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective at a time when Sandy Stone, a WBT was getting seriously trashed by certain lesbian feminists. I had photographed a number of the women who recorded for Olivia Records, the label that the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective recorded on and there was material in Feminist and Lesbian History archives that I had access to. I checked and didn’t find her there. Now she could have used a different name, perhaps Denise Tree and yet I really didn’t find much there but I was reminded of something I had seen happen in the LA Feminist community.
I was involved with Renaissance, a trans-group with Jude Patton, Carol Katz and Joanna Clark (Sister Mary Elizabeth). Someone came to meetings and photographed some of us. Those photos were featured in a feminist publication in conjunction with an excerpt from Janice Raymond’s then doctoral thesis, which went on to become The Transsexual Empire. When these came out my position was one of, “So what… I experience patriarchal oppression and I am a hard working feminist with good solid politics.”
But this other sister claimed she was actually not transsexual but was really intersex. I didn’t think much of it at the time and she wasn’t claiming to be intersex and trashing transsexuals by claiming to be realer than the lumpen masses of women born transsexual.
In that same time frame (circa 2000) I started hearing a lot about Bailey and Blanchard as well as their crackpot theories regarding androphilia/autogynaphilia as the motivating force behind transsexualism in T to F people. One mailing list I was on (Trans-Theory) was invaded by an extremely vicious cabal of people who were sock puppets hiding behind various aliases. They engaged in a brutal assault of people’s sense of self worth accompanied with occasional threats.
One claimed to be intersexed with CAH and accompanying salt wasting. Okay, that sounded reasonable. But why was she coming to a mailing list for Transtheory and pushing Bailey/Blanchard and Lawrence along with praising Janice Raymond?
As time has gone on Andrea James of TS Roadmaps has investigated both Triea and Chase. She credibly alleges them to be frauds as do others. ISNA has fallen apart.
This leaves people with far more credibility such as Sophia Seidelberg and Curtis Hinkle of OII to pick up the pieces and undo the damage done by someone who has become the J.T. Leroy of the intersex movement.
Of note I have noticed that the people who appear to be genuine tend to not be overtly hostile to people with transsexualism who do not tend to appropriate their narratives. Along with our appearing in the same books of early research the approach to sex reassigning that people with transsexualism have of not having such surgery performed without our consent offers a model for people with intersex conditions who wish to exercise existential agency in determining via surgery their membership in one sex or the other.
Even young children are capable of making their desires known regarding which sex they consider themselves to be in a way that infants are not. Consent and self determination should always be the critical factors not doctors or clergy acting as authority figures.
As I said OII has to undo the damage done by Triea.
But it is not an easy task as I have discovered on a mailing list for the discussion of the removal of the GID Diagnosis from the DSM. Like many mailing lists this one seems to have died and only the rot from within remains as it has been taken over by the wailing of people with kitchen sinks full of improbable and often contradictory combinations of intersex conditions.
People who in spite of living as men and never having taken hormones are more women than post-SRS WBTs who have lived 10-20-30 or more years as female.
Surgeries performed I guess while they were carried aloft by space aliens in flying saucers because the likelihood of them having been performed in the time frame, location or by the named person seems virtually nil.
The other thing I have noted is that people making these claims often share a common trait that makes me suspect they have Munchausen’s Syndrome as along with these improbable intersex conditions they also often claim some sort of horrific physical disability or disease. I suspect one is a spazzer (some one who pretends to have a rather profound learning disability). Either way these people are like vampires sucking the life out of groups in a way I have seen ever since I first became involved in feminist and LGBT/T causes.
Their requirements for attention are boundless. They find offense and attack back even postings or in a group statements that have nothing to do with them.
I have seen such people come into gender support groups and destroy them by taking the focus of these groups from mutual support to giving all attention to the person so beset by such a terrible history of abuse. The classic case seen in the media is J.T. Leroy who claimed to having been a child sex worker, the product of an abusive trailer park “white trash” family. I will grant you the books were labeled fiction but people interpreted them as autobiographical. The author J. T. Leroy was a fictional being, a middle aged woman who got another woman to pose as this reclusive and evasive transgender person who was not only an author but who was HIV+ and had lived the life of her characters.
When the truth comes out everyone feels taken and people with legitimate claims suffer.
Transsexualism is in all probability a legitimate intersex condition, more nature than nurture. The evidence keeps mounting for it being physical and although there continue to be staunch defenders of transsexualism being a product of flawed socialization their case seems to offer little beyond increasingly meaningless jargon and post modern babble.
As such people with transsexualism and people with legitimate intersex conditions have far more in common than one would imagine when listening to the people who sound as though they were abducted by space aliens with their improbable claims.
Women Born Transsexual 
October 15, 2009 at 5:41 am
Thank you Suzan. Once more a lesson of important history nearly lost.
October 15, 2009 at 6:36 am
Of course not *all* the improbable claims are false. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
If one does have one of these one-in-several-million chance rare conditions, it’s not exactly unusual to be treated with scepticism. Which is as it should be.
But when the scepticism turns into blanket denial, with ever more fanciful hypotheses advanced to try to explain away the extraordinary evidence, then in addition to the medical difficulties, it can be most tiresome for those affected. Trust me on that one.
It is within living memory that the “natural sex change” caused by 5alpha reductase 2 deficiency amongst the guavedoches in the Dominican Republic and the Turnim-men in the Sambia tribe in New Guinea was looked upon as mere superstition, an “old wives tale”. Even 20 years ago, the occurrence of 5ARD in pigs in Vanuatu was looked upon as nothing more than legend.
If someone claims they have a condition not well understood by medical science, odds aren’t that poor that they’re right. Many syndromes are “Idiopathic”, such as “Idiopathic Adolescent Scoleosis” etc etc.
If they claim to have had a “natural sex change” due to causes unknown, they better be prepared to produce photos, blood tests, and best of all, eye-witnesses to the change, otherwise belief is not appropriate. Only a few dozen worldwide can do that.
October 16, 2009 at 4:00 am
Suzy well written.
I am also fed up with the more trans than trans nonsense I hear form so many people who claim to be intersex, with impossible intersex conditions.
I have met real intersex people face to face. The people who make the claims have no idea of the real issues that intersex people face.
October 16, 2009 at 6:12 am
Being existentialist I tend to look more to actions than identity or even causes. On some levels the motivation is less important than the action. I am of the opinion that most of what motivates both tanssexual and possibly much of transgender is innate (but different). Transsexual is the act of changing sex with agency and action on the part of the person doing it. I don’t much give a rat’s ass about how you really aren’t transsexual because of improbable XYZ reasons. The acting upon those motivations is what is important.
October 16, 2009 at 10:23 am
“It is within living memory that the “natural sex change” caused by 5alpha reductase 2 deficiency amongst the guavedoches in the Dominican Republic and the Turnim-men in the Sambia tribe in New Guinea was looked upon as mere superstition, an “old wives tale”. Even 20 years ago, the occurrence of 5ARD in pigs in Vanuatu was looked upon as nothing more than legend.”
Head against wall banging hard.
Sophie
October 16, 2009 at 10:36 am
Hi Suzy.
This is an excellent article, well written and pointing out what needs to be said 🙂 The damage done by ISNA was extensive and it is good to see the damage they did is being confronted now 🙂
Sophie
October 16, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Suzy, thank you for this. Clearly a physical condition with a brain of one sex and genitals of another is an intersex condition. What else could it be? There are dozens if not hundreds of intersex conditions, and if classifying transsexualism as a purely neuro form of intersex helps both the genitally intersex as well as transsex, then good for all of us. Now that the connections with endocrine disruptors are being accepted the job is becoming easier.
Zoe, once again you are clear and lucid. Thanks.
October 16, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Actually I’m not sure it is the “brain” and not the hypothalamus and estrogen/androgen target sensitivity.
I wound up getting permitted into a physician seminar at UCLA regarding hormones after having let my doctor read a piece I had written for an under grad class.
There are feedback loops where the hypothalamus sends out a hormone and the gonads respond by sending out either estrogen or testosterone as the case may be and the right one stops the hypothalamus from requesting more. I look at how when we take hormones it fills the missing hormone and suddenly we feel whole.
I’m sure there has been greater study on this some where but that and sensitivity to the hormones in target sites could explain a lot.
October 16, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I enjoyed your article Suzan, There was a lot of good historical information in it that I wasn’t aware of.
The evidence that transsexualism is due to natural causes rather than nurture is very conclusive. There is just so much science that has been done that shows it to be true. It seems reasonable to assume that the same things that prevent the masculinization of the brain could also cause an intersex condition as well.
While medically, transsexualism could be considered an intersex condition, I think there are some good reasons why intersex and transsexuals should be thought of as separate groups, as evidenced by the story of Agnes. I can understand her desperation for surgery, but it is obvious how harmful her subterfuge of claiming that she was intersex was. Also as you mentioned, it is important that we do not appropriate each other’s narratives.
I guess that I am not an existentialist, because I am also concerned about motivations for obtaining SRS, and outcomes. I believe transsexuals are harmed by those who obtain SRS because of fetishisistic reasons, or because they may be confused or unhappy with their lives and obtain SRS for the wrong reasons. The regretors who bring about law suits against the doctors who performed the surgery harm the future ability of transsexuals to obtain SRS. I would hope the medical community would view these people as impostors rather than transsexuals.
October 16, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Agnes didn’t appropriate anyone’s narrative. Besides who is to say that she didn’t also have hypogonadism and the physical development that would suggest some level of androgen insensitivity?
I also don’t really care if someone gets SRS because they are AGP.
As for the regretful… Most of them seem to have fallen in with Christo-Fascist mind fuckers and seem more in need of deprogramming from the religious crap than anything.
I’m an anarchist and we make lousy border cops because we believe in freedom to control your own body and not have other people dictate to you who is or isn’t a “proper” transsexual.
October 16, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Suzan said:
“Agnes didn’t appropriate anyone’s narrative.”
You also said:
“She presented herself as an intersex person with male genitals and “spontaneously appearing” female secondary sexual features. She claimed these secondary sexual characteristics just developed and swore she did not take any legally or illegally obtained female hormones.”
That is appropriating the narrative of an intersex person, when she was not intersex. It’s obvious from the story that she didn’t believe she was intersex. Otherwise there would be nothing to “fess up” to.
You said:
“Besides who is to say that she didn’t also have hypogonadism and the physical development that would suggest some level of androgen insensitivity?”
But in your article you said:
“Agnes fessed up, she was transsexual and those female secondary sex characteristics were the result of her having first stolen her mother’s hormone tablets and later forging scripts for hormones and were not “spontaneously occurring”. ”
According to the story her physical development was not the result of hypogonadism or AIS, but was the result of the hormones she took. Those secondary sex characteristics were not “spontaneously occurring”.
You said:
“I also don’t really care if someone gets SRS because they are AGP.”
I was actually thinking of the mangina men.
October 17, 2009 at 5:26 am
Laura R: “That is appropriating the narrative of an intersex person, when she was not intersex. It’s obvious from the story that she didn’t believe she was intersex. Otherwise there would be nothing to “fess up” to.”
Bullshit. In 1960 there was no intersex narrative to appropriate. The whole intersex narrative was pretty much an invention of ISNA in the 1990s. I’ve heard things that were many orders of magnitude of appropriation on that one list we are both on. Space alien abduction levels of unlikelihood and you are going to attack someone who was creative enough to get SRS at a time when there were maybe a couple of thousand post-ops in the world?
Some one who isn’t even around to rebut you. Oh well I guess that is easier than arguing with people actually making fantastic claims today.
The fessing up part had to do with the taking hormones.
Mangina men. Like F to Ms that get pregnant? Or the F to Ms that don’t get SRS but are in relationships with gay men? Why do you care so much? Seriously?
We’ve taken on some of the suckiest value laden judgementalism of the religious fanatics and ultra right wing. What ever happened to the liberal idea of personal freedom?
One of my friends bounced back and forth before settling into a post-SRS place more neuter than feminine but this had to do with her having an impossible build. The kicker is she actually has a documented intersex condition of multiple Xes an Ys.
But you know I’m not some sort of Taliban Christer or body cop. If I’m not sleeping with some one what freaking business is it of mine what they do.
October 17, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I see, there were no intersex people in existence before 1960. Sure. 😉
So your saying that because I was born before ISNA existed that I am not intersexed and that I don’t exist, and I have no narrative. So I must keep silent about how doctors mutilated me as an infant and that I did not have a feminizing puberty. That’s right just erase me and my history for your convenience.
October 17, 2009 at 6:08 pm
That is right. In the 1950s people were hermaphrodites and pseudo-hermaphrodites.
Intersex as a term came into usage at some point in the 1970s. So there was no narrative for her to steal. Further there is a very good chance she was PAIS.
Look at the reality of the surgeries. More were probably feminizing than the other wau around. Too small a penis and they made a girl. Too big a clit and they cut it down to size. This is based on the same reason that it is much harder to construct a penis in an F to M than it is a vagina in a M to F.
October 17, 2009 at 7:01 pm
A rose by any other name…
So she stole the narrative of a pseudo-hermaphrodite. That doesn’t change what she did. Playing word games doesn’t improve your argument. That’s like saying people didn’t steal cars years ago because back then they were called automobiles.
You said:
Further there is a very good chance she was PAIS.
Is this more than just idle speculation? What is your source of information? She admitted that her female secondary sex characteristics were not “spontaneously occurring”.
You said:
“Look at the reality of the surgeries. More were probably feminizing than the other wau around. Too small a penis and they made a girl. Too big a clit and they cut it down to size. This is based on the same reason that it is much harder to construct a penis in an F to M than it is a vagina in a M to F.”
Unfortunately that wasn’t true in my case. I wish you could have told that to my doctors. It would have made my life a whole lot easier. All such non-consensual surgeries should be banned.
October 17, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Right. Look your narrative comes off sketchy. You are making the mistake of arguing it with some one who has actually read the research and You are doing it in my house.
Some 40% of people with transsexualism tend towards having aspects of their development that doesn’t conform to their assigned sex.
I’ve heard the stories from people who don’t want to be transsexual so bad they feel they have to justify it with something else. Laurent and Tree for example.
I’m skeptical. Say something that convinces me.
Agnes at least reversed the order i. e. got SRS and then admitted what she had done. Do you realize how many I have seen try the opposite?
October 17, 2009 at 8:39 pm
“”Further there is a very good chance she was PAIS.””
“Is this more than just idle speculation? What is your source of information?”
Stoller’s Sex and Gender Vol I and Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology
October 17, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Your post here post doesn’t match the one I got in my e-mail. In the e-mail you asked:
“But the far more important question since you say this happened back in the 50s is when did you get SRS to correct this assignment?”
I got SRS in 1978. I’m happily married and have been married for 20 years. I don’t need to justify anything about being transsexual or intersex or anything else. I also have nothing to hide.
It was my sister-in-law who is an RN who told me about my mother taking DES. She told me this before I had my SRS, and explained to me what it was and how she thought that might have something to do with my being transsexual. I even went to a lawyer to see if there was a possibility of a law suit, but the lawyer explained how that might not be the best move for me to do. There is just no way to prove what DES did to me.
I’ve never even posted on the internet before this year. The only reason I got involved in this internet stuff was that my doctor took me off hormones 4 years ago. I didn’t like being off of hormones so I started researching hormone regimens and that led me to a bunch of transgender sites. After I figured out what transgender was all about I couldn’t believe what was happening to transsexuals.
That’s also when I started seeing some things about intersex. A few things I read about intersex made me reconsider some things about my past I had never really connected before. The scars I had that I had assumed were partly from a butchered circumcision. My small genitals and the small testicles that liked to go up and stay inside me. About the small breasts I developed during puberty and my lack of body, under arm, and facial hair. About the vagina my SRS surgeon found when told me that I had tried to make his job easier as I was recovering from surgery. I had to have a large skin graft from the back of my thigh to make my vagina because I didn’t have enough good tissue for my surgeon to use. I had to have 2 other surgeries because of complications which may or may not be because of my previous surgery.
I don’t have any problem with having been transsexual. In fact, I was happier not knowing about my being intersex. Yes, it answers a lot of questions about my past, but now I’m having to deal with all this knowledge that’s about as traumatic as finding out that you were adopted.
But go ahead doctor, if you’re such an expert. Explain to me how I’m not intersex. Maybe I just dreamed it all.
October 18, 2009 at 5:37 am
I don’t have to. You just did by describing the exact same physical state I had. Very small penis, semi descended testes. Wide pelvis, curvature of forearm bones, feminine hip to shoulder width ratio. They took the skin graft from my left hip.
The standard described procedure. The one written about had we been operated upon would have been to turn us in to girls at birth.
Riki though wins the ribbon because other than having the more feminine than thou award on a trans mailing list in the words of the Jefferson Airplane “None of this means shit to a tree”.
When we are trying to get GID removed from the DSM, we are arguing as a class that is being harmed. Further we have a number of people with accounts that are at odds with our proving ourselves as a class to not be disturbed.
I ran the NTCU (National Transsexual Counseling Unit) with a sister named Jan Maxwell back in the early 1970s in SF. One day we had someone who was clearly for want of a better word insane come into the office, someone who was not only not there but was menacing. After the person left I commented on the person’sbeing really disturbed. Jan responded, “Who are we to judge considering how others consider us disturbed.” I said, “Who better, as we know the frontiers.”
Laura, you are clearly not like M on the list we share posting to. I asked, you gave a reasonable answer. Others do not, yet they to deserve to have their human rights protected, including health care, housing etc.
Again Riki is right. we waste so much energy fighting among ourselves it reminds me of the New Left or Feminist movements. If we directed that energy towards getting what we wanted we would probably have a better chance of attaining what we want.
October 18, 2009 at 3:18 am
Agnes – having read the original articles and other discussion of them (eg henry Rubin), it looks to me that Agnes believed that she had an intersex condition – (although as Suzan points out that was not a commonly used term at the time). But, also, the conditions of the time were such that it was much easier to get her SRS by convincing the doctors that ahe had a physical intersex condition. So she never told the doctors about her self medication with hormones.
On transsexuality as an intersex condition. Again – having exhaustively read the literature for a PhD I am writing on the subject, I don’t think it is the nice, clear dimorphic situation that some people seem to want – that there are transsexual people who have a totally sex reversed brain and then there are transgender people who have some social problem or fetish or something.
The first thing is that the male and female brains are not dimorphic anyway – any structural, functional or cognitive sex difference you measure has large overlaps (>95%), with one or two exceptions – and even those (like BSTc size and neuron number) overlap by at least 30%.
What seems most likely is that there are multiple parts of a gnedr identity network in the brain, which will have different impacts from genes, pre natal hormones, intra uterine experience, and yes – post natal experience. The same applies for gender behaviours, which are possibly more susceptible to post natal experience So you get a complex mosaic of gender identity and gender behaviour arising from a wide range of factors.
Out of that you end up with a “clumpy continuum” of gender variance. Body (not brain) intersex, transsexual, transgender, cross dressing etc reflect very different life experiences and felt needs, but have elements of causation, social stigma and life expereince in common – one of which is “the same people want to kill us”.
Rather than concentrate on the terms we use, perhaps it would be better to concentrate on building alliances to gain social and legal recognition, decent helath care provision etc.
riki
October 18, 2009 at 5:21 am
Riki – FWIW those are my conclusions too. I’d put the overlap at somewhat less, and mention the other neurological anomalies that are often found when the brain is cross-sexed compared with most of the rest of the body, but yes, you have it right.
Good luck with the PhD. Let me know of I can help. If I was doing my own on this subject, I think I’d have it by now – but my thesis is on Genetic Algorithms.
October 18, 2009 at 6:36 am
Enjoyed reading your article, 🙂
I cannot speak to science, stats or to anything requiring the sort of education i don’t have but i can, based on my experience and from all the stories from so many other women like myself say that yes, transsexuality makes a heck of a lot more sense ( i think it is morphological in origin ) that any nurture bla-bla.
At OII, intersex and transsexuals do work together and they are found in all walks of life, be they GLBT, religious, atheist, scientists, etc,. People in OII seem to put their energies towards things they have in common and work out any differences. I don’t always agree with all views there or anywhere but wow, they do make a statement for sanity within a group.
Chances are that one day, scientists will discover that transsexuality is some very specific biological condition, not necessarily an intersex one but as real as any biological condition gets, including intersex. As for transgender, there is way too many different types of people under that umbrella for me to even attempt thinking they have the same condition shared between them.
October 18, 2009 at 6:45 am
Having been the one who has proved and presented the thesis that in utero DES exposure causes transsexualism (as it causes homosexual orientation as well), I’d simply like to commend Riki and Zoe for their thoughtful comments. I also grew up with tales of a “botched circumcision,” and then started menstruating at puberty and ended up in renal failure.
Intersex is a large enough category to include the genitally intersex, genetic/chromosomal/epigenetic/metabolic/toxic . . . intersex, we ought to stop beating up each other and continue to move the science forward while we fight for our rights.
October 18, 2009 at 8:32 am
Dana
Can you please present this proof that DES causes transsexualism and homosexuality?
October 18, 2009 at 11:40 am
Hello Zoe,
I see you are now claiming there are hundreds, possibly thousands of people in the UK who spontaneously change sex.
I have a one word answer to that statement, “BULLSHIT”.
Using the comments section in a newspaper in an article covering the murder of a woman to post trannier than thou nonsense, is out of line.
Also 5 alpha is not a spontaneous sex change. I hope you never meet someone with 5 alpha as they will not be to understanding about your comments.
As a matter of interest are you still on the anti-cholesterol tablets? In some people they can cause no testesterone to be produced. Just add hormones.
You did not have a spontaneous sex change. You had to have surgery.
Your comment in that newspaper.
————————————
I’m Intersexed rather than Transsexual (technically anyway). One of the conditions where your apparent sex at birth changes later in life – rare, but more common than you’d think. Maybe a thousand like that in the UK, certainly quite a few hundred.
A survey in the North East states of the USA showed 40% of TS people were unemployed, 25% in part time employment, and only 35% in fulltime work. But the ones in fulltime work earned less that 8,000 pounds a year on average.
I finish my PhD in computer science in about a year. I have no idea if I’ll ever get paid work again.
I’m not TS, so I can’t get my UK Birth Certificate saying “boy” changed. Yet my UK passport says ‘F’, because of medical reality. Try explaining that to a prospective employer. Even getting a job flipping burgers or delivering pizzas with something like that on your record may well be an impossible dream.
– Zoe Brain, Canberra, Australia, 18/10/2009 15:40
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221080/Woman-dead-burned-flat-sex-worker.html
————————————–
October 18, 2009 at 11:59 am
Zoe,
I forgot, you were also on androcor.
Androcor and estrogen together will feminise the body. There is no need for anything else.
Also you have fathered a child, so was functional, unlike m,ost intersex people.
October 18, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Hi Andrea 🙂
This is what I find depressing, i just cannot understand why Zoe finds it necessary to compare her story with 5 alpha. Firstly I never had kids, I can’t have kids, that is to do with my having 5 alpha, and I find that upsetting. The other thing she does not understand, I am sure of this, is that with 5 alpha you don’t “Change sex out of the blue” it used to be misdiagnosed as a form of AIS, and the confusion lay in the fact that more extensive virilization took place during puberty than expected. that is not the same as an instant sex change of the sort Zoe is describing.
Every time I see her mention “5 alpha reductase-2 deficiency” i know that “Spontaneous sex change” will soon follow or “Myth” and “Rare” or “strange” and “Wierd”
I am sure that she can name the condition she says she has, but she does not she just compares her situation to mind in effect, but I never changed sex in the manner she describes and with 5 alpha the process is virilizing not feminizing.
I wish she would not do that because I have to spend more time explaining myself to people when they find out I have 5 alpha. (Something I resent doing anyway).
I know I will never wake up one day with a 20 foot dick between my legs and I wish she would stop saying this is what happens, it doesn’t. As for someone having fathered a child and turning female out of the blue, I do find it hard to understand, and I have the very condition she compares her situation to.
Sophie 🙂
October 18, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Suzan said:
“I don’t have to. You just did by describing the exact same physical state I had. Very small penis, semi descended testes. Wide pelvis, curvature of forearm bones, feminine hip to shoulder width ratio. They took the skin graft from my left hip.”
Oh my gosh, you too! Did you ever think you might have PAIS? That’s my best guess for what I have. The one good thing at least, is that we had something that made us look feminine.
My graft was taken from the back of my left thigh. I wonder if that’s just a co-incidence or if the left side is preferred for some reason. They called it a half-thickness graft, and it left a scar that is 8.5″ x 4″. The donor site hurt more than anything else did.
I tried to reach out to M on the other list you referred to, but she refused to reply to me. I hope that sometime she can find some relief from her torment.
October 18, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Laura, “Did you ever think you might have PAIS?”
What difference would that make? Seriously, would it have prevented one instance of childhood abuse.
Does it get me a gold star or blue ribbon in the perpetual trannie contest of claiming to be more woman than another sister?
I’m a feminist and a lesbian. I used to turn heads in every bar I went into straight or lesbian. Other than being able to know I didn’t have to go home alone what difference does it make.
I was very female looking before. I used to kid I didn’t have gender confusion, I caused it. My actions in life are what make me the woman I am. SRS made me female and able to become my own woman.
October 18, 2009 at 3:15 pm
In 1962 when I was reading as much information as I could find on what it was that was affecting me. I came across an interview with Georges Burou the Cassablanca surgeon who was responsible for devising the penile inversion surgery currently performed today though it is more developed today. One the key points that the doctor made was the very female nature of those he chose to operate on. The term used in the article was “These people are already mostly female in physical appearance. It is why I will operate.” I was 14 years old at the time I read that magazine article. Also contained in that report were reports of the treatment the women had received at the hands of other “doctors” psychiatrists who subjected them to “electric shock aversion therapy” I showed this magazine article to my Mother who wanted to take me to doctors to “get me fixed” She was hope ful the aversion therapy would work on me I am sure. I screamed the house down and refused to have anything to do with it. For years I made secret plans to get to Cassablanca. Probably was a good thing I didn’t as it turned out.
My point here is that the instinctive reaction of doctors back then was that there is a physical cause to transsexuality. Today so much conflicting information gets thrown around from multiple sources. I wonder where it all got thrown off the rails. Personally I believe two people, significantly they are both men, are wholly responsible. Primarily John Money and a very close marginal second, Arnold Charles Virginia Prince Lowman.
As for Rikki I am always sceptical of science or biology that uses statistics in an attempt to prove some science. It simply means they haven’t a clue but seek to justify the time they just wasted. It is my feeling that the facts that are ignored by and large are these. The clear difference between transsexual and transgender is the purity of the self identity and rejection of genitalia and secondary sex markers experienced by transsexuals both MtF and FtM. This facts also display themselves in the behaviour and life choices post correction. Seems to me these factors are either ignored or written off as mere accidents or a matter of good fortune far too often.
Evangelina
October 18, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Regarding 5ARD and 17BHDD – rather than “spontaneous sex change”, a more accurate and precise statement is “changing from a somewhat, mostly or completely female appearance to a somewhat, mostly, or completely male appearance.”
But “spontaneous sex change” while a gross over-simplification, is still a reasonably accurate statement for *some* who have it.
We have to be careful though, as gender identity may be completely female, and the degree of physical change varies a lot. I’ve only corresponded with less than a dozen people with 5ARD, and while some are “just guys”, some are “just girls” too. Both have sometimes been victims of incompetent medical intervention (no Sophia, you’re not the only one, as I’m sure you know). Usually gonadectomy on baby boys to try to make them into girls, but some like you too. Finding the data is difficult.
As for myself – I’ve been unable to find any other cases where the change was so rapid. 2-5 years rather than 3 months appears to be the rule for all the other idiopathic looking-partly-male-to-looking-partly-female changes. We have a good set of observations, but no good hypothesis to explain them.
October 18, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Andrea,
Email me (db299@cornell.edu) and I will send you the one paper that was published. The presentation I made to the International Behavioral Development Symposium has never been published because the lead author has been ill and I have not been willing to take the credit.
The link with female homosexuality is in the literature.
October 18, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Andrea B – of course my Androcur must have been heavily contaminated with Resublimated Thiotimoline, as its effects started over 3 months before I was prescribed it….
The feminisation came first. By the time I’d been prescribed hormones, I’d lost a third of my body mass, and my matabolism was having a full meltdown. Oh yes, and I no longer passed as male.
The hormones did what they were supposed to, and put my metabolism in a known, safe state. It was 5 months later before I got to see a psych and got (retroactive) authorisation for a full feminisation HRT regime. And whatever surgery was needed, things were a mess.
But I’ve said this many times before. It doesn’t seem to register on some people. Disbelief I can handle with evidence, but not refusal to comprehend. Not that I can really blame you or anyone else, it took a lot to convince me that I wasn’t completely delusional.
October 18, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Dana –
That would be the one co-authored with Scott Kerlin? A preliminary version of which was given by him at the 6th Annual E-Hormone Conference, New Orleans, October 27-30, 2004? “The Presence of Gender Dysphoria, Transsexualism, and Disorders of Sexual Differentiation in Males Prenatally Exposed to Diethylstilbestrol: Initial Evidence from a 5-Year Study”? There was a later one at the International Behavioral Development Symposium 2005
Minot, North Dakota 2005, but you’re talking about a third paper I don’t have a copy of, right?
Would it be possible for me to get a copy too?
October 18, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Question:
“Did you ever think you might have PAIS?”
“What difference would that make? Seriously, would it have prevented one instance of childhood abuse.”
Answer:
That wasn’t a loaded question. I was just asking an innocent question. Good grief! I thought I might have it, and since we seemed similar I wondered if you thought the same thing about yourself. I’m sorry I asked.
But to answer you, yes it makes a difference. It makes a difference in how you’re treated by doctors, parents, and others if they knew about you, and the difference isn’t good.
I don’t understand the second part of your question. Would what have prevented child abuse? Having PAIS? Caused it is more likely. You’re pretty much guaranteed to be abused if you have it or any intersex condition.
Question”
“Does it get me a gold star or blue ribbon in the perpetual trannie contest of claiming to be more woman than another sister?”
It doesn’t get anything from me. I don’t hold to that hierarchy baloney and people who know me know that. Do you have to be so confrontational all the time? I thought we had something in common, maybe some area where we could understand each other. I guess I was wrong. I’m sorry for just trying to be conversational with you. Sheesh!
You said:
“My actions in life are what make me the woman I am. SRS made me female and able to become my own woman.”
I agree.
October 18, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Laura: “You’re pretty much guaranteed to be abused if you have it or any intersex condition.”
Actually the name for the abuse is misogyny and most intersex issues are pretty much invisible ones. Extra chromosomes etc. Not to mention tomboys who might have a similar sort of masculinizing factor tend to excel in sports and get treated better.
The point I am making is thatbeing able to point to PAIS and say aha doesn’t really offer a whole lot in validation.
As for oppression… there are so many things that can bring a person oppression or privilege.
I was born working class poor, that too has been a source of oppression.
What we have in common is that we both had an operation that changed what most people consider an ascribed attribute to one we achieved and that in and of itself is a pretty existentially heroic action to take requiring a great deal of courage and internal strength.
We became real through our actions in a way that Simone de Beauvoir would find very profound. I will grant that with all the abusive freaks out in the world it is sometimes hard to see what a powerful act of creation of self getting SRS is and we look for answers as to why we did it. But for me the why has become almost like the answer Hillary gave as to why he climbed Everest, “Because it is there.”
The answer as to why I took this major step is because I was profoundly unhappy and taking the leap from the Golden Gate without at least trying to be what I wanted to be seemed the coward’s way out.
That is enough reason.
October 19, 2009 at 12:45 am
“Why are/were you transsexual?” is, in some ways, similar to this classic (at least among alcoholics):
Why do you drink too much?
Ans: Because I’m alcoholic.
Why are you alcoholic?
Ans: Because I drink too much.
In other words, WHY does not matter. It changes nothing.
It’s what you do about it that matters.
“Wordy rapping games” change nothing — neither the past, nor the future. What we DO can change our future — and allow us to come to terms with our past.
It’s amazing how my having SRS, becoming the woman I always thought I was meant to be, has allowed me to work through most the anger and hatred I had for those who abused me so during my youth. That burning hatred that once consumed me, is gone.
Now that I feel “normal” with myself (what a strange concept), I can actually understand how confusing I must have appeared to so many of the boys (and girls).
The worst thing about postponing coming out (for me) is the continuing damage I did to myself, trying to fit into a role I was not well suited to.
Why I was this or that does not matter — trying to find a role that could “fit”, attempting to “be” some sort of guy — because that was “the right thing to do” (even though I really could not quite do “the right thing”) only led to pain for me and those around me.
I truly regret hurting all those who loved, trusted, and depended on me in those years.
Life is FAR better now.
October 19, 2009 at 5:55 am
Zoe, regarding your neuro bovi-methane expulsion syndrome (bullshit).
You were on TS lists for years before transition. You had a penis. You had sex resignment surgery, by scalpel.
Stop using other people’s narratives to justify your own existance.
Transsexualism exists, get over it.
October 19, 2009 at 6:18 am
Andrea: “Transsexualism exists, get over it.”
Exactly… Hence my responses to Laura trying to coax a claim of PAIS out of me. If I have PAIS then so too do lots of sisters.
The reality was I was a feminine transkid who wanted to be a girl. When I grew up and saw that the transchildhood filled with abuse was going to be an adulthood filled with more of the same I stopped accepting the negative evaluations of who I was and embraced being transsexual by coming out and getting a sex change operation.
Has anyone noticed how taboo it is to call the operation sex change surgery? How even Sex Reassignment Surgery is considered edgy? How many euphemisms there are that deny the reality of sex and the fact they change male genitals to female and female to male.
Leaving aside all the speculation, which is sometimes fun in a coffeehouse philosophical discussion but when reality bite comes off as the person making those claims being pretty much in denial of what they did in getting SRS.
As far as I see it you are transsexual if you change the sex you were assigned at birth, end of story. The action taken is is what makes one transsexual not the root cause behind it all.
Hence if you, of your own volition change the sex you were assigned at birth then you are transsexual. You are transsexual if you change the sex you were assigned at birth. It becomes a tautological arguement.
October 19, 2009 at 5:56 am
Tina, well put.
October 19, 2009 at 6:16 am
Hello Zoe
“Both have sometimes been victims of incompetent medical intervention (no Sophia, you’re not the only one, as I’m sure you know). Usually gonadectomy on baby boys to try to make them into girls, but some like you too. Finding the data is difficult.”
Well in the latter case things were only complicated by the fact that most of the time 5 alpha was misdiagnosed as PAIS. And problems often started because tissue was more sensitive to androgens than in the case of PAIS.
So if you want to find that data, try looking at the stats with regards PAIS.
And this does illustrate the lack of wisdom in comparing different situations. I do not have the condition or medical issues you have. I have not experienced them.
As with things we have discussed before 5 alpha does not make a good clinical analogue for something else.
I will ask you a question, why should I feel awkward because my body is more sensitive to androgens than a woman with AIS? I ask this because it would in the realm of genderspeak make me more “Male” but 99% of the female population are as sensitive to androgens as I am.
Can you see what I am driving at? Being intersex (According to the textbook) does not legitimise anything.
All that happens is you get people discussing your situation as if it were something else.
I am not some mysterious 5 alpha being, I am a human being, it is very important to understand this.
Sophie 🙂
October 19, 2009 at 9:54 am
Zoe Brain Says:
10/18/2009 at 4:43 PM
Andrea B – of course my Androcur must have been heavily contaminated with Resublimated Thiotimoline, as its effects started over 3 months before I was prescribed it….
————–
How many people do you think got the Thiotimoline reference. Asimov published that spoof “paper” in 1948… Only real geeks (particularly older chemists) would likely get it!
– Karen
October 19, 2009 at 10:58 am
Suzan said:
“Hence my responses to Laura trying to coax a claim of PAIS out of me. If I have PAIS then so too do lots of sisters.”
I wasn’t trying to coax a claim of PAIS out of you. I don’t claim to have PAIS, I just consider it a possibility, and there’s a big difference in claiming you have something and thinking you MIGHT have it. I can’t afford the testing for it to know for sure, and whether I have it or something else really doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t change anything.
I’m a woman and it doesn’t matter why. I had sex change surgery and that’s what matters to me. I have no problems calling it sex change surgery, because that is exactly what it is, and it’s exactly what I did. I changed my physical sex to female. I couldn’t live any other way.
October 19, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hello Karen, The statement does fit, as in science fiction. Zoe needs to realise that science fiction is not science fact.
Over the years some science fiction has helped to inspire people to create science fact, but wishful thinking and attempted appropiation/assimilation of medical histories of very real people does not make a fantasy, real.
It is still purely fantasy.
October 19, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I’ve known Zoe on line for a long while now and the vibe I’ve always gotten from her has been that she is sincere and honest.
– Karen
October 20, 2009 at 12:11 am
@ Karen,
The best liars are the most believeable. Check out con artists, ponzy schemes and sales representatives.
The most self deluded don’t even know they are lying.
In this case, it is pure verbal diarrhrea, by someone who has not realised that being polite to everyone will still not make a lie stick, by telling it politely over and over again. It is a good method to make a lie stick though and will give Zoe credit for that.
If Zoe spent her time improving herself, she would be better of. All Zoe is doing is creating a downward, ever decreasing spiral of delusion and lies. The lies feed of the delusion. The delusion feeds of the lies. By this self enforcement it constantly compounds itself, into a reality which is completely fictional, like some sort of second life character.
Zoe spins a good tale, but that is all it is, a story. She is a good writer, which is one of the many facets that makes her story more believeable.
I have known a few intersex people over the years. I know a bit more about intersex issues than most. I can assure you, Zoe is fabricating this one. she has left to much of a trail all over the internet.
Zoe can not get a gender recognition certificate in the UK because firstly she is still married and secondly becuase she would have to have a UK registered approved medic to sign of on her gender recognition certificate.
The cost of getting a UK medic for someone in Australia, is probably the real reason she can not get her birth certificate changed. Christine Burns gave that one away a few years ago with her deranged statement that Australian people should fly a medic out to Austrailia to sign the papers. The cost of that was well beyond most transsexual people and Burns knew that.
Zoe has been around TS lists for years now. Long before transition or changes. Unfortunately for Zoe I have been on some of those lists.
She has learn’t a lot over the years, but most importantly still has to learn to just accept her transsexualism as legitamate and move on.
Her problem is the same as most others with false intersex claims. They have bought into the sexualisation and fetishisation of transsexualism, that is forced upon us by the media, LGBT, religeous people, law makers and clincians.
Those who create the situation whereby fetishisation and sexualisation of transsexual people occurs, are actually dangerous. Transsexualism starts in childhood, most likely in the womb. Anyone sexualising anyone at that age, is a dangerous pervert and should be stopped in there tracks with all available force. Society will be a lot better of when those who sexualise and fetishise transsexualism are securly behind bars.
Buying into that can lead a person down a dangerous fundamentalist road.
Zoe had sex reasignment surgery a couple of years ago. There was no spontaneous sex change. She had a penis. A surgeon reshaped it into a vagina and cut of the testicles.
It is plain and simple.
You have been on the lists for years now as well. You have seen people come and go. Do some digging on your own. Sit back and think about it. You will figure it out yourself karen. You are more than bright enough.
What worries me most about Zoe, is the not only the fact she is probably screwing her own head up to the point where something will have to give, but also the people who have bought into her fiction and will have there academic standing affected by it.
October 20, 2009 at 12:23 am
Andrea, you hit this particular nail square on the head. I couldn’t agree more, You took the words right out of my mouth!
October 20, 2009 at 12:32 am
@ Zoe, please step back and think. See a counsellor, barman or whatever type of person you feel comfortable literally laying it all on. You need to get it out of your system and get on with your life.
October 20, 2009 at 4:21 am
Andrea – please check the facts. There is in fact a gender specialist in Australia who’s on the GRP’s list of approved gender specialists. Professor Alfred W Steinbeck. Older than God, a contemporary of Harry Benjamin, and who has assisted the transtion of well over a thousand Australian transwomen – including his daughter. All I’d have to do us get a diagnosis of TS from him, and his confirming analysis of another treating physician’s clinical notes.
One problem: he’s the guy who diagnosed my condition as “severe androgenisation of a non pregnant woman” over a year before I had any genital reconstruction. A diagnosis not available to pre-op transwomen.
And “genital reconstruction surgery” rather than “sex reassignment surgery” it was, as according to my health records, I was deemed an intersexed female rather than a biological male before surgery. This caused me significant problems in an Australian legal context, as “sex reassignment surgery” was required by the Australian Passport Office’s regulations in order to get a passport. It took a 20 month legal fight to get that sorted out.
As for improving myself, yes, I should do more about that. All I’ve done is become someone various recognised experts in the area ask to peer-review of their work, while doing a PhD in a completely unrelated field. Plus the occasional remedial lecture to med and psych students (at their professor’s invitation) about the subject. Oh yes, and the submissions to the Australian Human Rights Commission on IS and TS issues.
Right now, investigating my own condition is on the back-burner. We’ve tried all the obvious stuff. And the non-obvious stuff. My reaction to hormones remains stubbornly idiosyncratic, but my metabolism is stable under the current HRT regime, so there’s no tearing hurry.
I know, I’m slacking.
The thing is – I have a Life, you know? I think I’ve devoted enough of it correcting a few errors in fact that you’ve made. Why your obsession about my medical history? Never mind. Whatever.
October 20, 2009 at 5:37 am
You have not had a diagnosis of being a severe androgenised non pregnant woman. Any medic who would write that would probably soon find themselves in a wrap around, tight fitting, tie at the back coat, soon afterwards upon there colleagues finding out.
If as you claim some people are stupid enough to have a blatant liar such as yourself, peer review their work from another speciality, then there careers are finished before even starting.
Who are these so called recognised experts?
Do they actually exist?
Are are they also figments of your very active immagination?
I dread to think what the submissions on the issues of intersex and transsexualism from someone who claims a transvestite fantasy of suddenly turning into a woman, would be like.
I have had enough of fantasists such as yourself constantly claiming more equal than others, more trans than trans, trying to legitamise yourself with conditions you do not have and constantly trying to legitamise nonsense in the area of transsexualism.
Transsexualism is legitamat. It does not need various conditions to legitamise it.
October 20, 2009 at 6:32 am
Zoe. I almost forgot.
You have a child. How could someone father a child and get a diagnosis of being a non pregnant female.
Also you did not have a spontaneous sex change. You have hormones, androcor which you constantly complain about and then sex reasignment surgery.
You are transsexual and in denial of your transsexualism. Your constant use of transvestite fantasies in denial of your transsexualism to transsexual people is actually offensive, wether you realise it or not. Also your constant association of various intersex conditions with your fantasies, is actually offensive and degrading to intersex people as well.
Please stop your fantasising. Some people are picking up on it and actually believing it.
There is far to much nonsense out there as it is. Transsexual people don’t need to put up with more nonsense.
October 20, 2009 at 9:16 am
Hi Zoe
I can understand Andrea’s “Obsession”. In 1993 we had Kiira (Denise) Tree and Cheryl Chase (Bo Laurent) constantly beating transsexual folks around the head, and when they claimed they were intersex, they used that as the stick to beat transsexual folks with.
Then Tree and Chase went on a spree of deciding who was and who was not “Geniune intersex” and before long they were bossing everyone around. then it turned out that Both Chase and Tree were lying about themselves, but in their wake they had left a lot of very hurt people.
Myself included.
The end result of it was “DSD” for intersex, “AGP/HSTS” for transsexual folks, a lot of greif and pain and transsexual folks being treated like they were sub human while intersex people were policed so heavily, they also felt they were being treated as sub human.
So when people appear making representations on the behalf of intersex or transsexual folks, while saying things about themselves that are a bit hard to reconcile with current scientific understanding with regards sex differentiation, people get nervous. They worry about the whole nightmare repeating itself.
Another problem seems to be the way all this paints being transsexual as somehow non valid or bad. “I have to call myself intersex so I don’t get called transsexual”. This is of course a pernicious form of sex policing peddled by Tree and Chase. Because both of them wanted to use transsexualism as a “bogey man” accusation when policing intersex people and make it very clear they despised transsexual folks.
Transsexual folks, clearly have had enough of being told by people who use the term intersex to define themselves, what is what, and how things will be.
I agree with the transsexual folks here, I have seen first hand how the likes of Chase and Tree among others have hammered them over many years. Appearing on emailing lists saying “This is what you are you evil disgusting sub human perverts!!!”
I even had to “Defend myself” against some of the ISNA/Clarke-Northwestern trolls. Because I dared to say “What is wrong with transsexual folks, they are the sex they end up as why is it a problem?”
And I will say it again when needs must. because for me it is about people being treated as human beings, not bits of body meat. If you are transsexual why is it a problem for you?
shalom
sophie
October 20, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Zoe. Just noticed something.
You claimed you started to feminise 3 months before starting to take androcor. So if you were spontaneously feminising, what the hell did you need androcor and estrogen for?
That would contraindicate androcor. So why did you take it, knowing full well you were going on a sex offenders register?
I have just read through quite a few various claims you have made over the years. If you actually knew anything about the subject, you would know that everything you claim contradicts itself.
October 20, 2009 at 6:34 pm
“You have not had a diagnosis of being a severe androgenised non pregnant woman. Any medic who would write that would probably soon find themselves in a wrap around, tight fitting, tie at the back coat, soon afterwards upon there colleagues finding out.”
That’s what it says on my health care records, Andrea. A copy of which I had to supply to the Australian Passport Office, and the Immigration department.
Proving that could be difficult, as it’s all confidential data. I could get you a photocopy, but your denial is so deep now you’d probably say it was faked, and I couldn’t prove otherwise.
Why was I put on Androcur? Because my LH and FSH levels were chaotic, I’d lost 1/3 my body mass and still dropping, and if my system didn’t stabilise soon I’d be dead. It was an attempt to put my body in a known, stable state while we worked out what to do next. Not something that could wait on the bureaucracy deciding to update its records in its own sweet time.
You asked me to have a talk with someone about this. I did, a few months ago. To Milton Diamond. One of his PhD students has a similar syndrome, as does another woman in Hawaii. You’ll see photos of us together on my blog.
Sophie, I have no problems being classed as TS. For most purposes I am. If it wasn’t for the legal and medical issues, I wouldn’t be reminded that I’m not quite the standard model TS woman, as psychologically, I’m almost a stereotype. I didn’t crossdress before transition, that’s about the only thing unusual. I’ve tried to stress that while *technically* I’m IS, with all the legal and medical issues that entails, that I am for all other intents and purposes TS.
I think that’s what’s confusing Andrea. It’s obvious she completely misunderstands the situation, and has decided that I’m deliberately deceiving everyone for some nefarious purpose. Maybe she should read some of the comments on my blog from people who were eyewitnesses to the change. But I think her scepticism is so deep now that she’d say that data was faked too.
Whatever. The point is, it doesn’t matter. Reality is, regardless. What I say, and who believes me and who doesn’t is irrelevant. It’s mildly irritating to be called a liar, but no biggie.
October 21, 2009 at 11:20 am
Zoe, If you handed that statement to the passport office, they must have had a good laugh. The information is only as confidential as you want.
You were never a severely andorgenised female or an undervirolised male. I have seen your picture.
You claim you were not able to pass as male anymore. BULLSHIT.
Even after FFS it is still possible for people to pass as male.
Your Anu picture shows some interesting photoshop or FFS changes, most likely photoshop.
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Zoe.Brain/
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/09/diamond-in-hawaii.html
Here is a link were some genuine intersex people take you to task for your bigotry and attempted assimilation of intersex conditions.
http://letters.mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/07/xx_xy/view/index11.html
In plain language you are lying.
There is no reason to be put on androcor to stabilise LH and FSH levels. That is nonsense.
Now you are tying to drag Milton Diamond into it. You are in Australia, he is in Hawaii. Did you fly to him for therapy? You need to see a shrink about your delusions. You should have a phone book, use it.
I am sceptical for a reason. I know a lot about intersex. You are lying through your teeth.
you are a liar and a deluded liar at that.
You went on the Daily Mail website spouting that there is thousands of spontaneous sex changes in the United Kingdom, yet at this link you say there is less than 20 worldwide.
http://svforbes.newsvine.com/_news/2008/07/02/1633062-a-british-man-is-begging-medical-experts-for-help-after-he-started-turning-into-a-woman
On this link you aparently have Benjamin’s syndrome, as well as being a neocon.
http://newsbusters.org/bios/zoe-brain.html
You did not have a spontaneous sex change.
You had cross sex hormones.
You had Androcor to lower your testesterone levels. It is the wrong drug for LH and FSH if you have low testesterone levels.
You claimed you started to feminise 3 months before starting to take androcor. If you were spontaneously feminising, what would you need androcor and estrogen for?
The answer is, you are lying and you were taking it to reduce testesterone levels.
Low testesterone levels would contraindicate androcor. You knew full well you were going on a sex offenders register, if you took androcor. So why did you take it, unless you had normal male testesterone levels?
Your constant use of intersex narratives in typing diarrhrea on your keyboard, on the subject of intersex is bloody annoying. Here you are again.
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Profile?oid=1166860
You have had sex reasignment surgery. You had two testicles and a penis. Your testicles were cut of. Your penis was sliced open. You had bits cut out of your penis. Your penis was rearranged a lot and basically turned inside out. Then that inverted penis was put into a hole that a surgeon carved with a scalpel.
You fathered a child. You were a fuctional male. That is close to impossible for the majority of intersex people.
I see your rantings are everywhere on the internet.
Google actually autofills your name.
You obviously could not have a job, as you must be online making comments about 8 hours a day.
Do you have a job?
If so, do you sleep?
Have you ever actually did anything since transition, apart from type deranged, idiotic, imbecilic nonsense, on the internet?
Here is just some of the links that pop up regarding you.
http://letters.mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/07/xx_xy/view/index11.html
http://www.backtype.com/url/aebrain.blogspot.com/comment/00000653003247138988569810e1faae
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:zoebrain/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=8205
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Zoe.Brain/
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Zoe.Brain/is_ts_hr.html
http://dynamic.boingboing.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=feed&_type=actions&blog_id=1&id=119909
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/zoe-brain/0/91/230
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Zoe_Brain
http://twitter.com/paper_brain
http://www.opposingviews.com/users/zoe-brain#
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOBUVGNP0B491¨
http://anu.academia.edu/ZoeBrain
http://www.facebook.com/srch.php?nm=zoe+brain#/Zoe.of.Oz?hiq=zoe%2Cbrain&ref=search
http://oiiaustralia.com/zoe-brains-brain-gender-identity-reference-list/
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=42124
http://forum.keypublishing.com/member.php?u=19728
http://www.123people.co.uk/s/zoe+brain
http://www.transadvocate.com/legal-wtf-moment.htm
http://www.topix.com/member/profile/zoebrain
http://the-american-catholic.com/2009/07/17/culture-crash/
http://www.backtype.com/ZoeB/comment/00010600a444cc0a67292500d5f86a37
You spend to much time surfing the internet looking for places to leaves comments, claiming you are intersex.
ZOE
TURN YOUR FUCKING COMPUTER OFF.
GO OUTSIDE.
GO TO A SHOP, BAR, RESTURANT OR SOMETHING.
SPEAK TO PEOPLE. ENSURE THEY ARE REAL HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT SECOND LIFE AVATARS OR SOMETHING.
SOCIOLISE.
MAKE AQUAINTANCIES.
MAKE FRIENDS.
JOIN A CLUB FOR A HOBBY (make sure no one who is transsexual or intersex is a member).
DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF TRANSSEXUALISM OR INTERSEX.
HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT ANYTHING, SUCH AS THE WEATHER, GOING ON A HOLIDAY, ETC.
TALK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT TRANSSEXUALISM OR INTERSEX.
BUY A TERRY PRATCHET BOOK, SUCH AS SOURCERY, THE TRUTH OR THUD AND READ IT FROM COVER TO COVER BEFORE TALKING TO ANYONE TRANSSEXUAL OR INTERSEX EVER AGAIN.
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE GET TO FUCK OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER CHAIR AND GET A FUCKING LIFE, YOU POINTLESS WASTE OF GENETIC MATERIAL.
October 21, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Okay Andrea.
You’ve said what many of us have thought regarding Zoe. Saying further is un-necessary.
Please take this no further.
Thank you.
Suzan
October 21, 2009 at 11:22 pm
OK
October 24, 2009 at 9:54 am
I’ve known Zoe for over thirty years. I was one of the first to be told of what was happening when her metabolic upset occurred. It happened as she said. I saw it happening.
The news boggled me. But one in several million events do occur. And several things that were puzzling now fitted into place.
October 24, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Andrea, please get a hold of me. Also. that person you were talking about that exposed Zoe is none other than Kailana S. Alanaz. She’s a far better expert than Zoe and Kailana once gave a Zoe a beat down in BLO. That’s why When Kailana heard that Zoe takes Androcor, their became doubt and suspicion of Zoe’s claim of being intersex.
Oh and that link http://letters.mobile.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/07/xx_xy/view/index11.html
It was their that Kailana exposed Zoe.
October 24, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I am closing Comments on this thread.
I am asking everyone to cease in what is turning into a gang beating of Zoe.
Gang attacks go way beyond calling someone on peddling bullshit.
Too many people with transsexualism are way too fragile and too prone to harming themselves for me to permit the continued focus of attack on some one, who to the best of my knowledge has not created an Amazon category of books written regarding her BS.
Enough… I will not act nicely to those who presist.
October 26, 2009 at 9:20 pm
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