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Originally Posted by Tenchu
If no disorder exists, then no cure exists. Meaning their longing will not end with a sex change. If no disorder exists, then the real problem is some sort of emotional discomfort, probably caused by a disastisfaction with some aspect of their life. A sex change may help temporarily in pseudo ways, but I doubt the individual will ever be what you'd call a stable person.
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The disorder EXISTS. It's as well documented and as clearly classified as any other disorder and plenty of eminent doctors and psychologists agree. However you are quite right, now surgery is relatively easily available some people do pick it up as a way to fix their lives, but conversely others realize that's not the case, or in fact are genuinely happy with their lives other than the over-whelming revulsion to their own bodies. You only have to look at these individuals at times when surgery was not an option to see the level their own mental-biological miss-match distresses them. There were cases of desperate self-castration or men consuming vast amounts of face cream with estrogen in it in order to feminize their bodies.
Possibly this whole "transgender" is "gay" point comes from Thailand where the laws are much more lax on transgenderism than for homosexuality, and some do choose to change sex rather than live a life in opposition of the law.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenchu
Also, this does not excuse females who think they're males, as if no testosterone was ever recieved, then you'd be fully female, having never encountered any aspect of the male birth process, thingy.
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All women have contact with testosterone. It's produced in the female body just as naturally as in the male, just in smaller amounts. Excess testosterone produced by the mother during pregnancy can have a masculinizing affect on a fetus. Interestingly, fetal sex dimorphism (the difference between M and F) is a two-fold process; there's the development of the gonads (ovaries or testes) first, and sometime later, some differences in neural structures which i'll call Type A and Type B. It's been shown in some cases that perhaps fluctuation of hormones during the pregnancy can leave an individual with say, male sex organs but a few key Type A structures, which they aren't ordinarily co-ordinated with. This obviously, is completely outwardly hidden, but could have some kind of affect. The links with this and transgenderism hasn't really been fully explored yet, but it does seem to be connected.
Gender identity kicks in about 3 or 4 years of age, but doesn't seem to become set until about 6/7 years old, much younger than sexual identity which comes with puberty, so that might explain the reason why many transexuals insist they've felt 'wrong' since early childhood.