Transgender Q&A

[Maddie]

2 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I think sometimes trans stuff gets thrown in, wrongly, with the over-the-top craziness of drag queens.  I gather there´s some overlap between the drag and trans communities but they´re fundamentally different.

 

The fact that there is so much misunderstanding is the main reason why I wanted to start this thread even though I'm generally a pretty shy person. But yes drag queens are a stage act not an real life identity. 

[Maddie]

12 hours ago, idiot_stimpy said:

Maddie, if you are reborn as a human in the next life will you have attachment or aversion to the bodies sex at birth or just leave it be?

 

I have actually put some thought into this based off of the Buddhist scriptures and it seems like that if you let go of sexuality and focus on compassion then you are more likely to be reborn in a Brahma realm which is genderless. So I guess that??

Edited April 13 by Maddie

[blue eyed snake]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Welcome!  We´ll gladly accept you as one of the bench dudes.  As a former mechanic, I figure you´re more man than I´ll ever be. 

 

how i would like that 

the guy on the right is Apech, he has painted his hair and thinks he's still 18, we'll let him eh

 

Spoiler

 

[old3bob]

27 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I went to college in Alaska :-)

 

Did you hear that term back then?  I was also there near Anchorage for a couple of years in the 70's.  The summers were great, not so much for the long winters!   It was different, for instance if someone poached a moose it might make front page news but if someone was murdered in the wild down town area it might be reported on the 3rd page of the local papers...

Edited April 13 by old3bob

[blue eyed snake]

5 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I have actually put some thought into this based off of the Buddhist scriptures and it seems like that if you let go of sexuality and focus on compassion then you are more likely to be reborn in a Brahma realm which is genderless. So I guess that??

 

so poorold me who had all the joys of sex in my younger years and gave up as an old spiritual daobum will have the best of both worlds?

 

and how translates that in your next incarnation? or does it mean you won't come back here?

 

although i do not yearn to return fast, being in the physical world has a lot of attractions, the green grass, the feeling of sun and wind on your skin, the sweetness of some fruit.

Somehow I guess I am gonna miss that after a while 

[Maddie]

26 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

although i do not yearn to return fast, being in the physical world has a lot of attractions, the green grass, the feeling of sun and wind on your skin, the sweetness of some fruit.

 

karma and the inclination of the mind affects our rebirth according to the Buddhist sutras, therefore if you feel that way, that is what would bring you back. 

[Tommy]

57 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

Not insensitive at all, this is a Q&A after all lol. But no the act of transitioning did not change the desire for a family and such. I think the meditation that caused me to realize that I am trans in the first place did change that desire though. I have done a lot of Buddhist meditation and since Buddhism is focused on letting go of attachment I became asexual and have no desire for such things. 

Thanks for the reply.  So, meditation changed the desire to have family? The Buddha's story is that he had all the luxuries. Wife and son. But, he left them anyway to seek enlightenment. Personally, wife and family have always been a desire and meditation had no affect upon that. It only became a side dish (so to say). Meditation, for me, was just something in addition to life. Well, thanks for the information.

[Tommy]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

Not insensitive at all, this is a Q&A after all lol. But no the act of transitioning did not change the desire for a family and such. I think the meditation that caused me to realize that I am trans in the first place did change that desire though. I have done a lot of Buddhist meditation and since Buddhism is focused on letting go of attachment I became asexual and have no desire for such things. 

Sorry double post

Edited April 13 by Tommy
double post

[Taomeow]

21 hours ago, Maddie said:

Something really important to understand when it comes to transgender issues is the difference between the gender and sex.

 

Sex is a little more straightforward and it's based on physiology and genitalia. 

 

Gender is actually a cultural and psychological identification of the mind. 

 

The important thing to realize is that gender and sex are not synonymous and that the reason people who identify as a different gender than their sex transition is so that they can align their sex more correctly with the gender that they identify with. 

 

Sex reassignment is accomplished via physiological interventions -- surgeries, puberty blockers, lifelong hormonal therapies.  To change the physical body into a different one which will "more correctly align with the gender" is the standard practice today, with the number of such medical procedures in the US tripling every couple of years.  This is aimed at correcting a person's sex, which is physical, to align more correctly with the person's gender, which is mental.

  

At the same time, any attempts at working instead with the mind, i.e. the gender, which is "cultural and psychological identification of the mind" toward such "more correct alignment" are currently considered abusive, politically incorrect, and unacceptable. 

 

Q: why do you think this is the case?   

[idiot_stimpy]

44 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I have actually put some thought into this based off of the Buddhist scriptures and it seems like that if you let go of sexuality and focus on compassion then you are more likely to be reborn in a Brahma realm which is genderless. So I guess that??

 

Your awareness is non-dual.

Your ego/mind is dualistic between both positive and negative, male and female poles and everything in between. 

Your body is predefined at birth. 

 

I accept what nature has given me, even though I see that different parts of me could correspond to something different. This is the relationship between the body, mind, spirit. 

[Maddie]

12 minutes ago, Tommy said:

Thanks for the reply.  So, meditation changed the desire to have family? The Buddha's story is that he had all the luxuries. Wife and son. But, he left them anyway to seek enlightenment. Personally, wife and family have always been a desire and meditation had no affect upon that. It only became a side dish (so to say). Meditation, for me, was just something in addition to life. Well, thanks for the information.

 

Meditation is a very ambiguous word. The Buddha himself did many types of meditation before he sat beneath the tree and did the sort of meditation that caused him to become enlightened. I did Buddhist mindfulness meditation with a focus on how desire causes suffering. This is what changed things for me. 

[Tommy]

14 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

At the same time, any attempts at working instead with the mind, i.e. the gender, which is "cultural and psychological identification of the mind" toward such "more correct alignment" are currently considered abusive, politically incorrect, and unacceptable. 

 

Q: why do you think this is the case?   

Are you saying that working with the mind of the individual to get it to align with the physical genitalia is currently considered abusive? Is it working with the individual or is it working against the individual? What kind of treatment are you talking about?

Edited April 13 by Tommy

[Master Logray]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

Not insensitive at all, this is a Q&A after all lol. But no the act of transitioning did not change the desire for a family and such. I think the meditation that caused me to realize that I am trans in the first place did change that desire though. I have done a lot of Buddhist meditation and since Buddhism is focused on letting go of attachment I became asexual and have no desire for such things. 

 

Being spiritual would lessen the importance of the body and associated needs.  Then sexual needs, gender change would not be that necessary comparing with general population.   

 

[Maddie]

19 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

Sex reassignment is accomplished via physiological interventions -- surgeries, puberty blockers, lifelong hormonal therapies.  To change the physical body into a different one which will "more correctly align with the gender" is the standard practice today, with the number of such medical procedures in the US tripling every couple of years.  This is aimed at correcting a person's sex, which is physical, to align more correctly with the person's gender, which is mental.

  

At the same time, any attempts at working instead with the mind, i.e. the gender, which is "cultural and psychological identification of the mind" toward such "more correct alignment" are currently considered abusive, politically incorrect, and unacceptable. 

 

Q: why do you think this is the case?   

 

I don't know because I have definitely worked on my mind a lot. But then again I'm on a forum that is about such things. 

[Maddie]

1 minute ago, Master Logray said:

 

Being spiritual would lessen the importance of the body and associated needs.  Then sexual needs, gender change would not be that necessary comparing with general population.   

 

 

The body and the "spirit" if you want to call it that are connected though. To suppress what the mind is actually doing in order to appear "spiritual" is actually a form of denial. Ask me how I know lol ;-)

[Maddie]

I think the reason the topic of transgenderism brings out so many feelings in people is because it gets into the question of "what am I actually" which is relevant to everyone. 

[idiot_stimpy]

15 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

The body and the "spirit" if you want to call it that are connected though. To suppress what the mind is actually doing in order to appear "spiritual" is actually a form of denial. Ask me how I know lol ;-)

 

Suppression/repression vs transcendence is an interesting topic. 

 

Suppression is part of the illusion trying to fight another part of the illusion. Transcendence is seeing through the illusion entirely without needing to do anything. 

 

A belief held onto can cause internal conflict. Internal conflict is not healthy. One part of us holds onto a belief and another part a contradictory belief. We go to war within ourselves. 

 

Spiritual practice shows us we are not our beliefs. We are much deeper than just our thoughts.

[liminal_luke]

 

 

I find this topic difficult on several levels.  On the one hand, it´s clear to most everyone that the vast majority of people are born into either male or female bodies.  How people relate to their femaleness or maleness is another matter.  Some people comfortably fit into stereotypical gender roles; others, not so much.  For instance,  I´m a guy who has never willingly watched the Superbowl and I love to get together with friends and process my feelings.  But none of this, in my view, makes me a woman.  

 

Anyway, I think that the basic dichotomy between male and female anatomy is fundamental to the human experience.  We need words to describe the basic anatomical difference between the sexes and, up until very recently, those words have been "men" and "women."  I would prefer to continue using these words this way.  I don´t believe, for instance, that men can get pregnant.  To say otherwise feels crazy-making to me, feels like gaslighting.  I´m being told not to believe the evidence of my eyes.

 

None of this is to say, Maddie, that I think you are "really" a man.  I consider transwomen to be, well, transwomen.  Not exactly women in the sense that people born with female anatomy are, but not exactly men either.  I don´t know anything about "souls" but if there´s such a thing, it seems possible to me that transwomen have womanly souls.  I also think it´s possible that transwoman have anatomical markers of femininity on a neurochemical or neuroanatomical basis.

 

What´s hard for me, is that I´m aware that some people will find my take on this subject offensive.  It´s hard to talk about because if I say what I really think I´m likely to offend -- and I don´t want to offend.  I don´t think there´s anything wrong with being trans, not at all.  In fact, I suspect there´s a higher spiritual purpose to the whole trans phenomena.  I suspect that transgenderism is "a feature, not a bug."  

 

Like all people, I want to be accepted as I am -- unpopular opinions and all.  That might not be possible, but I figured I should tell the truth anyway, come what may. 

 

 

 

Edited April 16 by liminal_luke

[Maddie]

17 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 I also think it´s possible that transwoman have anatomical markers of femininity on a neurochemical or neuroanatomical basis.

 

What´s hard for me, is that I´m aware that some people will find my take on this subject offensive. 

 

If you watch that first youtube video I posted they show some interesting studies where they studied the brains of transgendered people and found that their actual brain composition was different than the same brains for cis people of the same sex. 

 

Luke you are like the least offensive and most sensitive person on here lol. Not understanding something is not offensive. Not wanting to understand and instead judging is. 

[liminal_luke]

1 minute ago, Maddie said:

 

If you watch that first youtube video I posted they show some interesting studies where they studied the brains of transgendered people and found that their actual brain composition was different than the same brains for cis people of the same sex. 

 

Luke you are like the least offensive and most sensitive person on here lol. Not understanding something is not offensive. Not wanting to understand and instead judging is. 

 

Thank you so much, Maddie.  

[Maddie]

38 minutes ago, idiot_stimpy said:

Suppression is part of the illusion trying to fight another part of the illusion. Transcendence is seeing through the illusion entirely without needing to do anything. 

 

This is interesting because for several years after I started meditating and these thoughts and feelings started to come up I thought something was both wrong with me and meditation so I fought it, and I fought it hard. 

 

Some of the exact same points that other people in this chat have brought up were thought by me, such as why would the outward expression of my body even matter. Can't I just be "spiritual" enough so that its irrelevant. 

 

But what I realize was that fighting myself was a type of repression and that the point of meditation was to know the mind. I was instead trying to control the mind which is the opposite of knowing. When I came to this realization that control was the opposite of knowing and that point of meditation was to know was when I stopped fighting what my mind and body were trying to tell me and instead let go of the control and embraced the knowing and therefore the acceptance. 

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

I don't know because I have definitely worked on my mind a lot. But then again I'm on a forum that is about such things. 

 

That's part of what I mean.  The current situation is, you have specialists to help you realign your body with your mind in case you feel they are not in correct alignment, by changing the body.  And there's no one but you, yourself and your mind for the opposite way -- to help the mind align with the body, rather than change the body in order to align with what the mind thinks.  Someone working on their own mind might be, in the words of (I think) Einstein, trying to solve the problem by the same means by which it was created.  He wasn't a meditator so his opinion may not matter, but in his opinion, it was not the best route. 

 

Personally, I had life-saving help working on my mind at one point (on different issues altogether, but numerous and disastrous enough to lead to debilitating suicidal depression, the adult-onset outcome of childhood adversities.)  But if you (or anyone else in the same situation) were to decide that, instead of changing the body to match the mind's self-perceptions, you were to seek out specialists working on the mind to help it match the body instead -- that wouldn't be available.  So hence my question -- why do you think this is the case?  Why does the current standard offer help only to those who choose to change their bodies, but no one is there -- not in any official capacity, with training, funding, studies, social encouragement, etc. -- for those who want to achieve such alignment via the opposite route, without changing their bodies?  I'm not pressuring for an answer, just wanted your perspective in case you'd given it any thought.  

Edited April 13 by Taomeow

[Maddie]

3 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

That's part of what I mean.  The current situation is, you have specialists to help you realign your body with your mind in case you feel they are not in correct alignment, by changing the body.  And there's no one but you, yourself and your mind for the opposite way -- to help the mind align with the body, rather than change the body in order to align with what the mind thinks.  Someone working on their own mind might be, in the words of (I think) Einstein, trying to solve the problem by the same means by which it has been created.  He wasn't a meditator so his opinion may not matter, but in his opinion, it was not the best route. 

 

Personally, I had life-saving help working on my mind at one point (on different issues altogether, but numerous and disastrous enough to lead to debilitating suicidal depression, the adult-onset outcome of childhood adversities.)  But if you (or anyone else in the same situation) were to decide that, instead of changing the body to match the mind's self-perceptions, you were to seek out specialists working on the mind to help it match the body instead -- that wouldn't be available.  So hence my question -- why do you think this is the case?  Why does the current standard offer help only to those who choose to change their bodies, but no one is there -- not in any official capacity, with training, funding, studies, etc. -- for those who want to achieve such alignment via the opposite route, without changing their bodies?  I'm not pressuring for an answer, just wanted your perspective in case you'd given it any thought.  

 

I tried the changing my mind route first. I fought and fought these thoughts and feelings and spent years trying to "meditate the trans away". What I found was that the more I tried this the worse things got and then that is when I had the epiphany that I mentioned previously about meditation being about knowing the mind as opposed to controlling it. When I let go of trying to control I had peace of mind.  

[Taomeow]

5 minutes ago, Maddie said:

 

I tried the changing my mind route first. I fought and fought these thoughts and feelings and spent years trying to "meditate the trans away". What I found was that the more I tried this the worse things got and then that is when I had the epiphany that I mentioned previously about meditation being about knowing the mind as opposed to controlling it. When I let go of trying to control I had peace of mind.  

 

My point was, you fought with no help from anyone when you tried to change your mind, but you had everything available when you decided to change your body instead. 

 

Nevermind though, it's just me looking at the bigger picture.   

[Maddie]

1 minute ago, Taomeow said:

 

My point was, you fought with no help from anyone when you tried to change your mind, but you had everything available when you decided to change your body instead. 

 

Nevermind though, it's just me looking at the bigger picture.   

 

I think I understand what you're trying to say, its just that when one goes to a therapist or a doctor for these kinds of issues the consensus is, is that is harmful to try to change the mind, and that the best course of action is to transition (aka change the body)