Transsexualism, Transsexual Case Studies and Effective Treatment Alternatives to Gender Reassignment Surgery

The Politics of Fear

Leo Strauss, a philosphy professor from Chicago University, often spoke of the power of nightmares and the politics of fear and how fear motivates a population. Strauss believed that if you instill fear in a population and clearly identify good from evil, the masses will respond sometimes in a patriotic manner. Strauss believed that the American people needed an enemy to rally around and motivate the population in a 'just' cause.

The Reagan administration leveraged the politics of fear in waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Reagan's administration cast the Soviet threat as being so mysterious and powerful that the U.S. had to out-spend and out-produce the Soviet to survive. In fact, the Soviet had little by the way of effective weapons systems, their systems were of such poor quality that they needed mass redundancy to be effective. However, CIA chief, Casey under Reagan, convinced congress otherwise, and received large sums of money in covert operations around the globe.

The Bush administration picked up the politics of fear where the Reagan administration left off with the largely the same cast of characters, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. They painted the new enemy as the unseen enemy, Al Qaeda. The CIA supplied and trained Al Qaeda to take down the Soviet empire in the eighties. After the Soviet collapse Al Qaeda lingered looking for a new enemy themselves. They found it in what were their suppliers. The new war, the War against Terrorism, now seeks to wipe out this new threat, which was in fact, largely wiped out in Afghanistan in 2002. Yet, the U.S. continues to fund the war effort at the same level as the cold war.

A number of transsexual advocates also practice Strauss' politics of fear and enemy fabrication to motivate the greater population to be more receptive to questionable medical procedures. These transsexual advocates make a number of arguments—some more alarming than others—to secure access to publicly funded or privately insured medical procedures aimed at transsexuals. Their lobbying efforts are paying dividends. More and more people in the greater population now voice the same arguments that transsexuals have been saying for years. As I list the arguments I will show how each one is fundamentally flawed.

"if you don't give them the surgery, they will commit suicide."
While it is true that the incidence of suicide is high in the transsexual community (approximately 5%), more post-operative transsexuals kill themselves than pre-operative transsexuals. If you base the critieria of whether to provide access to GRS procedures on the incidence of suicide, you should not provide access to GRS procedures at all.

"gender dysphoria is an accurate portrayal of the transsexual experience and any suggestion otherwise is oppressive."
The vast majority of male to female transsexuals regard any obstruction to surgical procedures that aid in their respective gender transitions as a form of suffering. A number of male to female transsexuals regard gender reassignment surgical (GRS) procedures as 'life saving' surgery and sacrosanct to their health interests, indicating a degree of discomfort in the absence of the procedure. The desire to aleviate preceived suffering is in fact a common diagnostic characteristic across all behavioral addictions. [1]

"It's their life. Are they not entitled to whatever surgery they want?"
In fact, people are not entitled to any surgery they want. Physicians are duty bound by their respective health jurisdictions to refuse treatments to individuals, who their doctors determine are not eligible. As Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is fundamentally flawed so too is HBIGDA's Standards of Care document that decides who is eligible to undergo a GRS procedure and who is not. Given the dramatically high incidence of male to female transsexuals, who not only fail, but fail miserably to benefit from invasive transsexual procedures, a GRS procedure should never be performed on a sexually developed individual under any circumstances.

"Transsexuals say they feel much better after the surgery, why should we not give it to all of them?"
Despite the overwhelming quantitative evidence that transsexuals, who undergoing GRS procedures, report they 'feel better' post-operatively, their lives more often than not get worse and not better. The ultimate measure of the effectiveness of any treatment is not whether the person simply 'feels better' after undergoing the treatment, particularly if there is a complete disconnect between perception and reality. Rather, the ultimate measure into the effectiveness of any treatment is whether the individual's life improves after undergoing the treatment. In any event very few of the centralized gender identities clinics, including the CAMH, have never performed qualitative analysis to determine how there once 'suitable' candidates for surgery are really living five years post-operatively. The ones that do, stop offering GRS procedures.

"The negative studies are fundamentally flawed and politically motivated."
No, they aren't. The studies conducted by post-operative transsexual interests are more suspect than the one's performed by arm's length, third parties. A recent study found that a significant proportion (29%) of post-operative transsexuals, who said sex was important to them, now report they can no longer orgasm where they reported they could prior to the surgery. At the same time the 29%, who reported they can no longer orgasm, all report satisfaction with the surgery, which is equally troublesome. In the case of sexually developed individuals there is rationally nothing to gain by undergoing a GRS procedure and everything to lose.

"GRS procedures are an effective treatment; mind altering medications don't work."
In fact the opposite is true. Transsexualism is a behavioral addiction much like a sex addiction, gambling addiction, Internet addiction or shopping addiction caused by a faulty reward system in the human brain. In fact modern research shows that medications that treat epileptic seizures-the same medications that are used to treat behavioral addictions-show good results in treating transsexualism. Transsexualism is otherwise absent in people, who are successfully treated for epileptic seizures. There is no reported case of a transsexual, who completely advanced through a gender transition, while taking anticonvulsants. Further, if the medical community were to treat transsexualism as a behavioral addiction in lieu of a gender identity disorder that transsexualism as it is known today would be virtually eradicated within one generation.

"you can't force them to wait while you look for a cure, you must act now."
You can act now. There is overwhelming evidence that transsexualism is a behavioral addiction much like a sex addiction, gambling addiction, Internet addiction or shopping addiction caused by a faulty reward system in the human brain. In fact research dating back to 1963 shows that the medications that treat epileptic seizures show good results in treating transsexualism. In fact in a study of 207 transsexual patients, dated 1967, shows that transsexualism is effectively absent in people, who are successfully treated for epileptic seizures. Despite numerous research studies that called for more research into the relationship between epilepsy, anticonvulsants and transsexualism, HBIGDA and a number of the centralized gender identity clinics, many of which are headed by post-operative transsexuals, skew their research towards advancing gender identity disorder as an accurate portrayal of the transsexual life stories in lieu of all else. [2] [3] In fact transsexuals, themselves, do not wish there to be nor will they accept any alternative treatments to GRS procedures. Like Anorexics, who regard stomach reduction surgery as a means of controlling unwanted body fat, transsexuals regard GRS procedures as sacrosanct to their health interests. The fact that they do is the behavioral addiction talking.

references

[1] GRÜSSER THALEMANN DIAGNOSTIC CHARACTERISTICS MODEL FOR IDENTIFY BEHAVIORAL ADDICTIONS IN PHENOMENON
[2] HUNTER, LOGUE, MCMENEMY TEMPORAL LOBE EPILEPSY
[3] JAN WÅLINDER TRAVESTISM, DEFINITION AND EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF OCCASIONAL DERIVATION FROM CEREBRAL DYSFUNCTION