Transgendered cabin crew? Medical point of view vs uninformed discussion
Plastic PPRuNer
"So, if a disturbed person decides he's really a parrot trapped in a human body, Mac, are you going to start operating, or treating the disturbed condition? Why are you saying 'yes, we have the technology.....we can make you a woman!' when you should be saying 'look mate, you're a bloke!'? Why?"
I agree that there has been discussion as to whether gender dysphoria is a psychiatric rather than a brain structural anomaly. Just as there has been about homosexuality.
Equally, attempts to alter the perceptions of gender dysphorics (and homosexuals) by means of psychological manipulations (operant conditioning etc., etc.) have been singularly unsuccessful. The threat of punishment, torture, and imprisonment (or worse) is ineffective. Just as have simplistic attempts as reason like saying 'look mate, you're a bloke!'.
"Doesn't the head need repairing?" Perhaps; most gender dysphorics (and many homosexuals) would dearly love to be "normal". But this does not seem possible.
"Our control of genetics will eventually give us the power of species realignment." I doubt it, and besides, that is a long way from isospecies gender problems.
"So, if a disturbed person decides he's really a parrot trapped in a human body, Mac, are you going to start operating, or treating the disturbed condition?" No, and that is a reductio ad absurdum as you know full well.
In the end, we may offer selected patients physical gender reassignment because other treatments (apart from 65gm of lead in the back of the head) don't work.
Mac
I agree that there has been discussion as to whether gender dysphoria is a psychiatric rather than a brain structural anomaly. Just as there has been about homosexuality.
Equally, attempts to alter the perceptions of gender dysphorics (and homosexuals) by means of psychological manipulations (operant conditioning etc., etc.) have been singularly unsuccessful. The threat of punishment, torture, and imprisonment (or worse) is ineffective. Just as have simplistic attempts as reason like saying 'look mate, you're a bloke!'.
"Doesn't the head need repairing?" Perhaps; most gender dysphorics (and many homosexuals) would dearly love to be "normal". But this does not seem possible.
"Our control of genetics will eventually give us the power of species realignment." I doubt it, and besides, that is a long way from isospecies gender problems.
"So, if a disturbed person decides he's really a parrot trapped in a human body, Mac, are you going to start operating, or treating the disturbed condition?" No, and that is a reductio ad absurdum as you know full well.
In the end, we may offer selected patients physical gender reassignment because other treatments (apart from 65gm of lead in the back of the head) don't work.
Mac
Plastic PPRuNer
"Mac, I'm very disturbed by this: you are giving surgery to otherwise healthy bodies to make them something they are not? Please explain." Correct, as I have said. And many people find the thought of this distressing or distasteful.
"I know some people don't have normally formed parts, but I know that most of this surgery is on normal bodies to make them something they are not, but what their perverted desire wants them to be? Is that a correct interpretation?" I'm not happy with your attribution of "perverted desire" to these people. For them, the only perversion is that they should have been born with a physical gender not in concordance with their mental gender. A cruel trick that nature has played on them.
"We are not talking about simple things like breast augmentation- we are talking about changing nature?" Breast augmentation is changing nature - its only a matter of degree. So too is taking antihypertensives or insulin. There are always ethical dilemmas, for example the resuscitation of ultra low-weight babies.
"How do you justify pandering to someone's psychological whims by carrying out unnecessary radical surgery?" It isn't a psychological whim (I wouldn't do it if it was) and surgery is only agreed to after extensive psychological assessment, a prolonged period of living as the other sex and often hormone treatment.
"It's all very well using fancy medical terms to pretend a condition exists, but it doesn't, does it?" Unfortunately it does - just ask the unhappy people with it. There is increasing evidence that this is neither a whim nor a perversion nor a psychological disorder but an inborn error of brain anatomy and neurochemistry.
"If you're so willing to carry out such surgery, why, when I want to be not quite so bald, can I not get society to pay for hair enhancement?" A bit less of the "so willing" if you please but if it truly causes you that much distress then perhaps society should.
Mac
"I know some people don't have normally formed parts, but I know that most of this surgery is on normal bodies to make them something they are not, but what their perverted desire wants them to be? Is that a correct interpretation?" I'm not happy with your attribution of "perverted desire" to these people. For them, the only perversion is that they should have been born with a physical gender not in concordance with their mental gender. A cruel trick that nature has played on them.
"We are not talking about simple things like breast augmentation- we are talking about changing nature?" Breast augmentation is changing nature - its only a matter of degree. So too is taking antihypertensives or insulin. There are always ethical dilemmas, for example the resuscitation of ultra low-weight babies.
"How do you justify pandering to someone's psychological whims by carrying out unnecessary radical surgery?" It isn't a psychological whim (I wouldn't do it if it was) and surgery is only agreed to after extensive psychological assessment, a prolonged period of living as the other sex and often hormone treatment.
"It's all very well using fancy medical terms to pretend a condition exists, but it doesn't, does it?" Unfortunately it does - just ask the unhappy people with it. There is increasing evidence that this is neither a whim nor a perversion nor a psychological disorder but an inborn error of brain anatomy and neurochemistry.
"If you're so willing to carry out such surgery, why, when I want to be not quite so bald, can I not get society to pay for hair enhancement?" A bit less of the "so willing" if you please but if it truly causes you that much distress then perhaps society should.
Mac
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In our haste to bend over backwards these days to let what was previously regarded as socially unacceptable behaviour
Yes, there is a dichotomy between public presentation in customer-facing roles, and absolute personal freedom. However, I am confident that many such individuals pass for the opposite sex without anybody noticing.
Besides, I don't think anyone was asking for absolute personal freedom, but rather a right to choose something that in no way whatsoever affects anyone but themselves.
What exactly do you think you / we are "letting them do"? It has been a time-honoured and cultural tradition for many years both for men to dress as women, and to genitally mutilate men (e.g. in opera). I am sure you can put your strong wikipedia searching skills to use in educating yourself on those areas as awell.
I am unclear as to what exactly you see to be "previously...socially unacceptable behaviour", though I am clear that you are liberally applying rose-tinted spectacles to your view of society as a whole.
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This thread has been copied here from the CC Forum. It was clear that there are two aspects to this topic: one the ''becoming CC'' point of view, the other the medical one.
We split them into the respective Forums.
We split them into the respective Forums.
Going back to the original question, I'm trying to think of a medical reason why this person shouldn't fly, and I can't.
I don't know a lot about the subject, (other than watching The Ladyboys of Bangkok a few years ago). Do transgendered folk have to take any medication?
Rainboe, I'm trying to understand your argument, but I'm finding it difficult. I guess there could be an argument about how we, in the UK, spend our scarce resources, and I'd agree that relying on "expert opinion" to label conditions can have it's drawbacks, but the bottom line is, this surgery relieves patients suffering, drastically.
I'm not sure that you can argue with that?
I don't know a lot about the subject, (other than watching The Ladyboys of Bangkok a few years ago). Do transgendered folk have to take any medication?
Rainboe, I'm trying to understand your argument, but I'm finding it difficult. I guess there could be an argument about how we, in the UK, spend our scarce resources, and I'd agree that relying on "expert opinion" to label conditions can have it's drawbacks, but the bottom line is, this surgery relieves patients suffering, drastically.
I'm not sure that you can argue with that?
Psychophysiological entity
Rainbow. This analogy might be more than a tad patronizing, but here it is anyway.
The manufacturers of a new and vast airliner stand back and look at their work. It's a beautiful creation, and for some time it seems to perform normally. At a certain age, it starts to show some serious anomalies in the way it responds to its black boxes. It's designer looks aghast at the plans. They fitted the wrong black box - in one of its deeply embedded driving logic centers. It's a logic area that only comes into play some of the time, but when it does, it's all pervasive, and will take over all other logical processes - no matter how much the pilot tries to deny it access to the controls.
This box is so embedded, that there is no way that it can be replaced or modified without destroying the aircraft.
The designers ponder long and hard about the fix. The only way is to start modifying the things that the black box controls. Smaller flap area, different rates on control movement, totally redesigned fuel management...huge technical problems trying to marry complex mechanical functions, to what is after all, a miss-structured square of silicone, only a centimeter square and two microns thick...its circuitry only visible with a Scanning tunneling microscope. Yet, a piece of circuitry that can ride rough shod over almost all of the aircraft's higher functions.
Something has to be done when the existing condition can not be born any longer.
The manufacturers of a new and vast airliner stand back and look at their work. It's a beautiful creation, and for some time it seems to perform normally. At a certain age, it starts to show some serious anomalies in the way it responds to its black boxes. It's designer looks aghast at the plans. They fitted the wrong black box - in one of its deeply embedded driving logic centers. It's a logic area that only comes into play some of the time, but when it does, it's all pervasive, and will take over all other logical processes - no matter how much the pilot tries to deny it access to the controls.
This box is so embedded, that there is no way that it can be replaced or modified without destroying the aircraft.
The designers ponder long and hard about the fix. The only way is to start modifying the things that the black box controls. Smaller flap area, different rates on control movement, totally redesigned fuel management...huge technical problems trying to marry complex mechanical functions, to what is after all, a miss-structured square of silicone, only a centimeter square and two microns thick...its circuitry only visible with a Scanning tunneling microscope. Yet, a piece of circuitry that can ride rough shod over almost all of the aircraft's higher functions.
Something has to be done when the existing condition can not be born any longer.
Plastic PPRuNer
No further comments from Rainboe?
A pity in a way. While I believe that his approach to the "problem" is Neanderthal and profoundly misinformed, it is only by ventilating such topics that that understanding and communication from both sides of the fence can be improved.
Incidentally and just for a start, Jan Morris CBE., the excellent British historian, author and travel writer, who served in World War II in the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers and accompanied the British expedition which was first to scale Mount Everest, was once James Morris....
As an amateur historian, I particularly admire her biography "Fisher's Face" of Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher, the architect of the modern Royal Navy. Amazon.com: Fisher's Face; or,: Getting to Know the Admiral: Jan Morris: Books
A partial list of well-known people who have crossed-over can be found at List of transgender people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mac
A pity in a way. While I believe that his approach to the "problem" is Neanderthal and profoundly misinformed, it is only by ventilating such topics that that understanding and communication from both sides of the fence can be improved.
Incidentally and just for a start, Jan Morris CBE., the excellent British historian, author and travel writer, who served in World War II in the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers and accompanied the British expedition which was first to scale Mount Everest, was once James Morris....
As an amateur historian, I particularly admire her biography "Fisher's Face" of Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher, the architect of the modern Royal Navy. Amazon.com: Fisher's Face; or,: Getting to Know the Admiral: Jan Morris: Books
A partial list of well-known people who have crossed-over can be found at List of transgender people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mac
