Gilda

Definitions change and evolve to fit new information, new ways of thinking.

I would do any person who wanted to be considered female the courtesy of referring to her in that way, regardless of whether I believed she was actually female. If she were living completely as a female, with a female identity 24/7, then yes, I'd consider her to be female despite her physical sex.

I know a young woman who fits this description pretty closely. She's a MTF transsexual, who unfortunately has type 2 diabetes. This means that female hormones and androgen blockers are potentially deadly, and no surgeon will perform any of the common surgical procedures. Other than laser hair removal of her beard, body, and leg hair, which was fortunatly quite effective, she cannot get any medical or surgical treatment. She works in a predominantly male job, and typically dresses in women's slacks, polo shirt, and sneakers at work. That's pretty much the extent to which she can alter her body to be more female; hair removal and clothes, and even her clothing tends to be somewhat androgynous. Her life partner is another woman.

Nonetheless, she thinks of herself as female, has adopted a female name and persona, and gotten as much of her identity legally changed to female as she can, without genital surgery.

I have no problem whatsoever thinking of her as a woman.

I disagree. I think it enhances the precision with which they can be used, to make a distinction between sex (physical) and gender (identity).

Oh contraire, by making a fine distinction between sex and gender, we can use these words with far more precision and be much more descriptive with them.

I disagree. You had straight males and a straight female, and therefore all of the contact was heterosexual.

I claim that gender identity and orientation are internal psychological constructs, most likely hardwired into the brain, and not determined by outside factors. If I'm attracted sexually to people I believe to be female, that makes me homosexual, regardless of what genitals they have.

Rampant, no, but readily accepted among the upper classes, even moreso than heterosexual sex. My point, though, was that the degree to which homosexuality is accepted by individuals in a society is often determined as much by cultural factors as by inborn factors. The reaction of Gwen's killer's wasn't natural, it was learned. I think if homosexual contact between males weren't so demonized in our culture, we'd have a lot more male bisexuality, and a lot fewer gay males and transsexual women murdered or assaulted because it caused some man to question his sexuality.

I've explained my position on this quite thoroughly, so I'll just let it stand.


I'm presenting my interpretation of the evidence, both psychological and physical, an interpretation that is shared by a majority of the therapeutic community that deals with transsexuals, and which matches my personal experience at having grown up with a transsexual woman. The science backs me up. In 1995, a group of Swedish scientists studied the brains of a group of normal men, normal women, and transsexual women, and found that a particular structure related to sexuality, the BSTc, was the same size in transsexual women as it was in natal women, while normal men had a BSTc that was about 50% larger than in both natal and transsexual women, regardless of orientation, and regardless of whether the transwomen had undergone hormone therapy or had genital surgery.

The presumed cause is that the hormone flood that occurs at about the 12th-13th week of gestation is somehow faulty, resulting in the formation of female brain structures in a male body. Obviously it would be unethical to test this thoery on humans, so a study on rats was conducted, in which male rat fetuses were infused with female hormones. If the theory of brain sex was true, we would expect that these physically male rats would behave like typical female rats. And that is precisely what happened. I unfortunately cannot find an online citation for this study.

I'm not confusing anything. I've clearly defined my terms. Sex, or physical sex, refers to biological sex. Gender, though frequently used interchangably with sex, I am defining here as internal psychological states and their modes of expression, specifically gender identity [one's internal sense of being male or female] and gender expression [how one's gender identity is expressed externally].

It isn't possible for a human being to be Mickey Mouse, while it possible for a human to be female. Male and female are different ends of the gender spectrum. Mouse is off of it altogether.

Except for the "reasonably", I agree, that was probably her motivation for concealing it.

The nature of my anatomy would preclude me from being able to perform a sex act on another person without interacting with that person's genitals, and in any case I much prefer to be the bottom in a sexual relationship, so a precise parallel would be impossible here. On the other hand, if a transsexual woman were to have performed oral sex on me and done it well, I can honestly say I wouldn't give a damn if she had a penis, so long as she didn't try to stick in in me anywhere.

Gilda

__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert