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Come on, now
Topic Started: Jan 29 2007, 07:40 PM (618 Views)
Silk
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Black
Joe, I think your prejudices are showing here. This boy has a mental illness, he needs help. As one who's been down that track, words don't work. Medication/Psychiatry does. Probably, in this case, hormone therapy works, too.

No, I'm not transgendered, my problem was something entirely different. What I have is never, ever going to go away, just as his problem is never, ever going to go away.
"We'll try being kinder if you'll try being smarter"
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Joe
Coffea Canephora
Silk
Feb 10 2007, 11:36 PM
Joe, I think your prejudices are showing here. This boy has a mental illness, he needs help. As one who's been down that track, words don't work. Medication/Psychiatry does. Probably, in this case, hormone therapy works, too.

No, I'm not transgendered, my problem was something entirely different. What I have is never, ever going to go away, just as his problem is never, ever going to go away.

Is hormone therapy going to make him stop thinking he's a woman?

Also: I didn't exclude medicine.

I think that an aesthetic operation is the wrong solution.
In the shadow of the light from a black sun
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants I've begged for protection?
I'm freezing
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Silk
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Why on earth did you feel it necessary to quote an entire post that was just above yours?

Surgery hasn't happened yet, as far as I can see. It may nevery happen. Counselling (I hate that word, it conjours up pictures of people who never have touched counselling as a career) and medication may work in the long run.

If the boy's problem is hard-wired into his chromosomes, then not much short of surgery is going to help.
"We'll try being kinder if you'll try being smarter"
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Quote from Eral
Quote:
 
What kind of medication will help him accept his body as male? What method of counselling will enable him to stop believing he would rather be female?


Quote:
 
That's up to psychiatrists and psychologists, not me or some surgeon.


I think this suggests Joe doesn't know the answer to that question, and we have to do what his parents are doing: hope it's right.
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Silk
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But he can tell us what's right or wrong, anyway? No, that won't wash. Either Joe knows this case in intimate detail or he shuts the fuck up.
"We'll try being kinder if you'll try being smarter"
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
That'll be the day. :lol:
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Silk
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Black
Yeah, but that's what it boils down to. Either Joe's a psychiatrist and knows the case inside out or he's talking shit (personally, I go for the second option).
"We'll try being kinder if you'll try being smarter"
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Joe
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Silk
Feb 12 2007, 01:49 AM
But he can tell us what's right or wrong, anyway? No, that won't wash. Either Joe knows this case in intimate detail or he shuts the fuck up.

The solution I proposed is that the boy should be given some kind of medication and/or counseling. The part that requires me to be a psychiatrist is determining which medicine to prescribe, and I admitted that it is not my place to decide that.

If I should shut the fuck up, then everyone should shut the fuck up.

Alright, so each and every person who has commented in this thread knows the case intimately? I didn't think so.

My opinion is that changing this boy into a woman is the wrong way to help him.
In the shadow of the light from a black sun
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants I've begged for protection?
I'm freezing
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Yes, we know that. But since you can't suggest any alternative ways to help him, there doesn't seem much point in continuing to say so.
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Joe
Coffea Canephora
I did suggest an alternative way.
In the shadow of the light from a black sun
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants I've begged for protection?
I'm freezing
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lara
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Kopi Luwak
Regullus
Feb 9 2007, 02:11 PM
To lara - Does your daughter talk about her gender?

Oh yes. Last summer or fall she told me she didn't like boys, and I pointed out that daddy was a boy, which gave her pause. She names the genders of her stuffed animals for me - she had seven stuffed animals and her (female) sippy cup (yup) sitting around, having a birthday party today, and she out of the blue told me which were male and which were female - five girls, three boys, she has, apparently. And I've noticed that since she started spending more time with her nanny and her nanny's four-year-old girl, she's more into labelling things for girls or for boys, which I find a bit disconcerting.

She likes to build, help daddy with his tools (very good at picking things out and handing them over as he needs them), and play with cars and trains as well.

And (a propos of nothing, perhaps) she got a play computer in the mail from an aunt the other day - one of these educational things for preschoolers - and yesterday she gave me her stuffed animals and told me I was their babysitter, then went to the kitchen, sat down on one of her little chairs, placed her computer in her lap and said, "I'm going to work at CBC.com." LOL. Too funny, especially since she's picked up the dot-com bit - it's actually CBC.ca.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
Joe: yes, you did. Then I asked,
Quote:
 
What kind of medication will help him accept his body as male? What method of counselling will enable him to stop believing he would rather be female? 

And you said,
Quote:
 
That's up to psychiatrists and psychologists, not me or some surgeon.

Desperately unhappy boy: radical transitional treatment: less unhappy boy. Sounds like the best solution anyone can come up with.

Labelling things is a part of language development: when a child begins categorising she's experimenting with making decisions for herself. The tendency to be very black and white comes out now, and it can seem that she has absorbed ideas that are limiting: but don't be too worried. "Mine" and "Yours" are difficult concepts that she's coming to grips with, and labelling things like boys/girls is part of her exploring and consolidating her ideas and knowledge. As she gets older, she will be able to accommodate wider and more various categories.

My nieces are incredibly girly girls (as my friend said to me as she watched the unwrapping of an incredibly girly gift: "Do you know how to spell feminist?") but their best friends are boys and girls and they regularly partner up with boys for group tasks. They don't see activities as specifically for boys or girls either.
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Joe
Coffea Canephora
Unhappy mangled freak is what we have now, but I'm not sure anyone is trying for anything else. It wouldn't be PC to tell someone like this that what they're feeling is not healthy.
In the shadow of the light from a black sun
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants I've begged for protection?
I'm freezing
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
As soon as you show us evidence to support your view, we can discuss it further.

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Bex
puppet dictator
'Nother case history.

A few decades ago, one of a pair of male twins lost his penis to a freak circumcision accident. The parents had no idea how to deal with this awful situation. Hearing about the theories of one Dr. John Money, that gender behavior is something children are trained into, they wrote for help. Dr. Money consented to help, not entirely out of good will, but because of the golden opportunity to put his ideas to the test (twins even! built in control!).

The maimed infant was renamed Brenda. Dr. Money emphasized that a successful reassignment would rely on an unswerving stance that Brenda was a girl. It was crucial that there be no cracks in the story. IIRC, the family went to far as to move cities, so that nobody would know their children had started out twin boys. Relatives were strictly briefed, and of course the other twin was raised to believe he'd always had a sister. As far as anyone can tell, the parents followed Dr. Money's plan to the letter, wanting to do what they felt was right for their child, as best they could. (Note: Follow-up surgeries were performed under the guise of correcting a birth-defect to the vagina.)

Now, the story gets murky here. For a long time, the case of Brenda was cited as a brilliant success for Dr. Money, creating a happy and well-adjusted girl where only a tragically disfigured boy could have existed without intervention. The trouble is, Brenda herself was apparently never comfortable with her identity as a girl, despite the care taken in raising her as one, and eventually, the truth came out. Brenda chose to become David at the age of 15. David killed himself at the age of 38 (there were a host of probable contributing factors).

wiki

My point here is that sexual/gender identity is not fluid. Changing it didn't work for the case of David Reimer, and in theory, everything was done correctly, and from infancy. If this Kim person already has a strong established identity, changing that is likely impossible.

For the record, I was a real admirer of John Money and his work before this case blew up, and I still think a lot of his research is fascinating and he can be credited with revolutionizing the way a lot of scientists think about sexual behaviour. But what he did to the Reimer family was a disaster.
I belong to one of those families that does not speak to or see its members as often as we should,
but if someone needed anyone to fall on a sword for her, there would be a queue waiting to commit the deed.
-Min Jin Lee
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lara
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Kopi Luwak
That's devastating.

Just on a very basic level, I couldn't have accepted what that man advised as right. You don't raise your kids in a lie; you don't conjure up worlds for them to live in. You give them truth and you give them support and you protect them from things they can't handle when they're young, but when it comes up, you go right back to the truth again.

As simple as: My brother's dog was going a bit wacky and bit his two-year-old. They had him put to sleep. They told her they gave him to someone, but of course she wanted to go visit him and in the end they had to admit to her that they'd lied.

Wouldn't have happened in my family (although my brother is the awesomest dad). Without truth, kids can't trust. Without trust, there's no security. Without security, a child's world has no controls and they end up being messed up.
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Eral
Kopi Luwak
David did not give his consent: he couldn't. And he was never a success story, because he was always unhappy. Inter-sex children often don't get to choose: they're "made" girls. I mentioned inter-sex children way back. We can't compare them to this boy, because he is choosing a different gender identity.
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Joe
Coffea Canephora
Correction: I meant happy where I said unhappy.
In the shadow of the light from a black sun
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants I've begged for protection?
I'm freezing
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