giantCplus

Now to define statement: a communication or declaration in speech or writing, setting forth facts, particulars, etc. The statement in this question is: it won't make you happy. Laced thought-out just about everything FunckyTown is trying to say is that “it won’t make you happy” Now to define Ignorance; the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information, etc. the fact that he made the statement with out checking the statistics on it proves his ignorance.

Thank you funky town, I did step back and you kind of hit a tender nerve with me. I am sensitive to this whole transgender thing. I have grown up as a transgender and gone through all the heartache of feeling out of place in my own body. There have been times when I have look at myself in the mirror and felt this overwhelming disgust with what I see. I have hated myself and loathed being in my own presence. I have been mistreated in school and in the church because I act different. People do not know that I am transgender, but they can see I am different in some way and they seem to think that gives them the right to treat me poorly. When I found this forum I thought; great, I have found a place with people like me who have struggled like me. I saw this forum as a place to share stories and encourage others in their struggles. I read great stories from some of the authors on this forum as Perigon, Katie 77584, slamjet, Spartan117, and many others. They shared their ideas and I was encouraged and inspired by them. They helped me and I hope others who struggle, or those who do not understand. I then I started reading some of the responses, like the one I quoted, that made me feel like I was a sinner and the only way back was to simply stop feeling like this. Like I could just turn it off like a tap. You asked; What if it won't make you happy? This is the very narrow minded and ignorant statement that I have been talking about. The stats contradict this statement you make, and even from the article you quoted in a previous post. Transgender Americans face high suicide risk - Health - Health care - More health news - msnbc.com state that the suicide rate before surgery is 41 %. And in two other articles. BBC NEWS | Health | Sex-change patients' op success, Most Patients Who Have Male-To-Female Sex-Change Surgery Are Happy, Despite Complications, both state 88% art happy and in a follow up with 70 of the original 222, 80% where still happy. The stats say yes. I have read many accounts that say they are happier after surgery. SRS helps. I have also heard many say that even before surgery they feel better on hormone replacement therapy. I would like to share a story of a friend, and this is what he said. “I do not have gender identity dysphoria, but my daughter does. I raised her as my son for 19 years before she told me. She was the shining example in our ward, president of her priesthood quorums and fist assistant to the bishop. She attended an LDS Curriculum private high school and was active in the student body. I was looking forward to her attending a mission and raising my grandchildren. “She first told me that she was attracted to other boys. My wife and I were devastated, but we made sure she knows that we loved her and that would never change. I was serving in a bishopric at the time so I got out my manual and tried to understand what the Lord had said about this. She quit coming to church, but has never lost her testimony. “Then she told me that she was a girl trapped in a boy's body, but assured me that she didn't intend to actually do anything about it. (I think she thought this was what I wanted to hear.) A few months later, late one evening she came to me and said that she had just tried to hurt herself and that although she stopped she realized she needed professional help. “I realized at that moment that I would rather have a transgender daughter who was healthy and happy, than a miserable son who was so tortured that he contemplated suicide. That evening I decided that if she needed to transition I would support her all the way. “ I would like you to take a few minutes to read the story of Alex Chrisholm - Riding the Gender Pendulum He has an amazing story and he has been through hell and back. In spite of everything; his stake president supported him despite how he feels. “With a heavy heart, I informed my local Church leaders of my decision. Fortunately, they cared a great deal for me and showed me nothing but love. In the end, I received well wishes from them all with a special commitment by the stake president that if I ever needed anything, he could be called day or night.” This and the story of my friend is the kind of compassion I am talking about. This is compassion coming from our leaders who are setting the example for us. Now speaking of myself; at around the age of ten or eleven my bottle had broken (that I kept my transgender feeling in) so to speak. I had spiralled into the darkest depth of my emotions. I hated myself for feeling this way. I felt so evil and there was nothing I could do to change it. I did not know how to deal with these feelings. I was so terrified to tell anyone for fear that I would be ladled a sinner for feeling this way and the only way to save myself was to STOP!!! But I did not know how. I loathed myself and wanted to die. As I sat all alone at home that night, I wallowed in the darkest dreary depth of despair. I went into the kitchen and took the biggest knife I could find and held it to my chest. I did not want to live like this any longer. And the saddest part of it all was my family would not have seen it coming. At the time I did not know what stayed my hand, but it was the darkest time in my life. I placed the knife back in the drawer and went to my room. I threw myself to my bed and howled bitter tears. I cried myself to sleep thinking; “I can’t do it, I can’t even kill myself. I would always be trapped in this wretched despondent existence I called life.” And my hatred for myself grew. I did not know what I had at the tome, but if I could not be a girl, I wanted to die. On so many occasions that I can not count; I would whish and pray that god would make me a normal happy boy. That is all I wanted to be, was to be happy as a male and feel comfortable in my own body. So what do you tell someone who you love or care for deeply comes to you and says that they would rather die than endure anymore of the emotional torment they feel? These feeling are not a lifestyle choice. These feeling are not a result of a bad diction; they come from birth. Who would choose that kind if persecution if they had the choice. I am not going to transition; it is not the right choice for me. For the same reasons as Alex chose to retune to being male, and I fear that one day I will not be able to withstand. Now I ask another question; what about Hermaphrodite (the proper term is Intersex)? Is it considered mutilating their genitals when they chose a sex? Or if the parents chose the sex at birth of the Intersexed child, and the child identifies with the other sex? It is changing their physical body. Also I want you to consider Androgen insensitivity. You take some one who is genetically male but is borne with complete Androgen insensitivity. They are born looking like a girl; they grow up believing and being happy as a girl. It isn’t until later in life when complications arise that they find out. What where they suppose to be; Boy or Girl? This is just two examples of the gray area around this whole gender thing, and the more you contemplate it the grayer it becomes. Many say that Intersex is another form of transgender. The lord does not judge us all as a whole. He does not hold everyone to the same standards. He judges us individually. In the address By Elder M. Russell Ballard: Suicide: Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not he talks by the judgement of Christ. When he does judge us, I feel he will take all things into consideration: our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received, the traditions of our fathers, our health, and so forth. We learn in the scriptures that the blood of Christ will atone for the sins of men “who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned.” (Mosiah 3:11.) I want you to learn about us transgendered people before you pass judgment whether it is right or wrong. Go to my Blog - All of Me: The Transgender Woman Inside and read about me, my experiences, and my beliefs. Then follow some of the other blogs that I follow. Transition may not be right for all, but maybe right for some. So I give you the same challenge. Consider what I have said here. A lot of what I say is not modern society talking; it comes from deep personal experience. I have been there in those bad experiences, I have done a lot of things I am not proud of, and I have attempted Suicide. I agree with most of what you are saying. I just don’t agree with how you are saying it. For that reason I have been preaching compassion.

How have I not done that? To me is sound like you where telling him to leave. Is that not a form of silencing him? When did I say that? In the past I have simply pointed out what I was doing and suggested that for anyone else it is between them and the lord. Please enlighten me. What is X and Y suppose to mean? And then are you subjecting that you understand what its like to be transgender? And never once did I claim that it was right to do anything that was not within the standards of the church. Like I said before that it is between them and the lord, and that they need to discuss it with their local leaders. When did I say that? And for the third time it is between the individual and the lord. What I have been saying all a long here and what I think OnAJourney was trying to say is that a lot of the comments here are very narrow minded that do not follow the teaching of Jesus Christ. I am suggesting that we open up the dialog to a more compassionate one. There is a lot of grey area that surrounds why transgender people are they way they are. And very little has been revealed to us about it. Try to show them a little compassion. Do not tell them they are sinners because they what to transition. I would love to transition, but I am not going to. Does that make me wrong?

Thank you annewandering. I now see the error in some of the wording I have used. Some of my statement where poorly thought out, just as the one you pointed out. I got so caught up in the heat of the discussion that I fell into the very trap I was trying to avoid. Let me clarify what I was trying to say in my Post to FunckyTown. I am trying to show that there are many post here, like the one I uses, that do not fully follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. These post are the ones OnAJourney are referring to. I simply used the teaching of Christ that pertained to my point. Maybe using the church as a whole was the wrong choice of words. Maybe I should have worded it as, “The truth is that Christ taught of love, acceptance, fellowship and above all he asked us all to come follow Him (among other things).”Also when I say acceptance I mean acceptance as in not passing judgment on your fellow men, not that we have to accept the man and his sin.

If you tell that to a prospective member; is that going to entice them to come unto Christ, or is it going to scare them off because they need to repent? I don’t know about you but I think the first is a little more welcoming and just as true.

The truth is that this is a church of love, acceptance, fellowship and above all we proclaim to follow Jesus Christ. Is this the kind of attitude someone who follow Jesus Christ has. No, this is the kind of attitude that keeps people away from the church. Saying they are not welcome, because they are transgender, in the nicest way possible. This is a statement made in ignorance. And this is the ignorance that I was referring to. You can disagree all you like there is nothing stopping you if that is your prerogative. But don’t do it at the expense of someone who is asking an honest question and seeking an honest answer. If you want to disagree, I am sure there are plenty of other forums out there that can accommodate you. You said… Do you not think that silencing voices such as OnAJourney that has many years of personal experience as being a transgender just as counterproductive? Would this person not be able to offer personal insight to help erode the shroud that environs the mysteries behind the transgender experience? And your final question… I haven’t a clue what you are trying to say here. What thinking have I assumed already done?

So let me ask you this funky town. What is the point of having a transgender forum when the people who the forum is intended to help are scared off by the opinion of those who speak out of ignorance?

LDS Gender has an interesting post on transgender people in the bible. I found it motivating and insightful. It helped me to change how I see myself as a transgender member of the church. Exaltation available to all « LDS Gender

you hit the nail on the head with what you said. I agree with you 100%. I want to educate people about this condition so they can not hide behind ignorance. I have stayed in a previous post that... I do not know if there are still any other transgender people following this thread, but I have seen some comments here that would scare many off. I hope that we can change the tone of this forum to one of understanding, and not ignorance.

so a little more knoledge and a few hundred more years of enlightenment will end the religous stigmas on transgender people?

OK, so when someone got dressed, in male or female clothing, did it cause physical harm to them self or someone else? How many, who removed their own limb or had someone else do it, got hurt or hurt someone else in directly? Where does this “41% of post-op (after surgery) attempt suicide,” come in. All the articles I have quoted state that the high suicide rate is Pre-op (before surgery), and they have a greater quality of life after they have transitioned completely (surgery being the final stage). The 41% that you where quoting was pre-op, before they had their surgery not post-op.

I agree there are similarities but they are still two separate conditions that require two separate treatments. “Some theorize that BIID is an extreme demonstration of Munchausen syndrome, a condition where the sufferer feigns or creates symptoms of illnesses in himself or herself in order to gain attention, sympathy, and comfort. The role of “patient” is a familiar and comforting one, and it fills a psychological need in people with Munchausen’s. BIID seems to have a similar pathology, where the subject seeks the special attention given to the disabled.” Amputation Fetishism • Damn Interesting International Classification of Diseases from WHO | World Health Organization Doing a search of the World health organization website did not find any results for Body integrity identity disorder. The clasfication for GID is as follows. http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/bluebook.pdf page 168 classification: F64 Gender identity disorder In the article you quoted…Transgender Americans face high suicide risk - Health - Health care - More health news - msnbc.com “Yet transgender people overwhelmingly say it's worth it. After transitioning, transgender people show a significant decrease in substance abuse problems and depression, for example, and their mental health significantly improves, Knudson said.” And in a article I found in the BBC website… BBC NEWS | Health | Sex-change patients' op success “Most patients undergoing male to female sex-change surgery say they are happy with the results - despite significant complication rates, a survey suggests. University Hospitals of Leicester surveyed 220 people and found 88% were content, and only 7% were unhappy.” Further down in the article they interviewed in-depth 70 of the 220 a few years later. “However, some three-quarters of the 70 said they remained happy with the way their surgery had gone.” Also in the same article… “Male to female sex-change surgery is a major operation, which not only means the removal of the male sex organs, but uses their tissues to help build functioning female organs.” Suggesting that the male sex organs are not removed but used to build functioning female ones. They are not removing the organ and leaving nothing. They are replacing it with the likeness of another organ. There may be similarities, but they are still different disorders. The there origin is different; the area of the brain that the disorder affects is different. The emotional drive may be the same but the treatment is different. Under going sexual reassignment surgery is not going to put a burden on the healthcare system (you pay for it out of pocket). Chopping off ones limb and making them handicapped will place strain on the healthcare system, and possibly in the welfare system if they are no longer able to work or properly perform their job.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder Body integrity identity disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Well for starts both of these sights state that… “The most widely accepted current theory on the origin of BIID is that it is a neurological failing of the brain's inner body mapping function (located in the right parietal lobe). According to this theory, the brain mapping does not incorporate the affected limb in its understanding of the body's physical form. (Mysteries of the Mind, Secret Life of the Brain E2, TVO documentary)” from Wikipedia. From… Gender Identity Disorder “What Causes Gender Identity Disorder? The exact cause of gender identity disorder is not known, but several theories exist. These theories suggest that the disorder may be caused by genetic (chromosomal) abnormalities, hormone imbalances during fetal and childhood development, defects in normal human bonding and child rearing, or a combination of these factors.” And from another article I particularly like on… GID.info | Gender Identity Disorder Information “Research carried out in the mid-1990's may have discovered just such a previously "undetected deviation" in the brain structures of transgender individuals. In 1995 the Journal Nature [www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0106.htm] reported on the findings in Holland concerning an area of the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) region and its put it forth as a possible explanation for Gender Identity Disphoria. The BST region had long been believed to influence sexual behavior, and is known to be larger in male vertebrates, which was why the researchers compared the brains of six transsexuals to the brains of non-transsexual men and women. Although the sampling was small, the BST regions in all six transsexuals were closer to the average size observed in female brains. [i should note that there have been similar comparisons of the size of the BST region between known homosexual and heterosexual men that found them to be comparable. …” I would suggest reading the entire article. As I read several articles about BIID I did not come across anything that mentioned suicide, placing BIID in another class of disorder. In the article… Transgender Americans face high suicide risk - Health - Health care - More health news - msnbc.com “A staggering 41 percent of transgender people in the United States have attempted to commit suicide, according to a new survey. About 19 percent of transgender people report being refused medical care because of their gender-nonconforming status, and a shocking 2 percent have been violently assaulted in a doctor's office. “ It does not say anything about… You are comparing apples to oranges here. It is not a matter of wanting to cut of the genitalia, it is wanting to change it to match what is felt inside.

If you are not transgender, you have no hope in understanding. I have said in some of my previous post that I am not planning on changing my body, and attempting to live out my life as god intended for me.

If you are not transgender, you have no hope in understanding. I have said in some of my previous post that I am not planning on changing my body, and attempting to live out my life as god intended for me.