Gender Identity Disorder and Asperger's Syndrnome.

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Why should the mental state of the individual dictate what is to be scientifically classified?





One can also mentally identify as being a cat. Does it make it so?




Female humans can ovulate, menstruate, produce eggs, carry children in the uterus, meet the unborn child's nutritional needs through the placenta, birth children, and lactate once the child is born. Male humans can generate store and generate sperm in the testes. Their pensies can become erect and ejaculate semen, containing male gametes. The small and motile sperm fertilize the egg and produces a distinct zygote. 23 chromosomes from each parent combine during fertilization. Please spare me the predictable arguments about exceptions resulting from distinct medical conditions.





Without classification, the basic of linguistic communication is destroyed. How can one identify an apple without defining it's distinguishing characteristics?




What differentiates the genders? Societal gender roles?

I have no idea why you think this question is relevant. It's unclear what you think a mental state is.
The fact is gender is a social construct, and ouri notions about biological sex are strongly influenced by the prevailing gender construct.
I'm sorry, did you think this question bore some relevance to the discussion? I cannot see it, so if you think it is relevant you will need to explain this relevance if you wish to me to respond.


Well you've really made it easy to provide an example, so much so I'll rely on our own. Our own gender construct fails to group people as being of the feminine gender, according to whether they can do all those things. Many people with XX chromosomes and female sex traits are infertile and cannot carry children in their uterus, but are classed as being of the feminine gender.

Er, did you think midwives/doctors masturbate newborns before assigning them to a gender? According to our own gender constructions, what gender are people with an XY chromosomal identity, and penises, who cannot achieve erection, or ejaculate semen? What about persons with penises who do not have testes?


I have no idea why you think this is relevant. You wish to view science as entirely objective rather than the attempt of socially influenced subjective beings to see beyond their innate subjectivity and socially mediated/formed perspective. That is not an objective view, although it is understandable since you are a subjective being.

Unless you interpret the recognition of limitations as being the same as suggesting something is without utility, I really do not understand what you believe the relevance of your comments above is.


Socially constructed gender norms, beliefs and constructions differ across time and space, so what differentiates between genders also varies.

It is relevant because it also relates to personal identification that is contrary to physical appearance and biological reality.




Infertile women still possess the skeletal structure, chromosomes, and sex organs specific to the female sex. Medical conditions can often explain infertility.




Again, these are also explained by medical conditions. Erectile dysfunction can often be caused by never injury or loss of blood supply to the penis. There are physiological explanations to each and every one of these disorders.



Science has always had a strong element of subjectivity. This is especially true when it comes to theories derived from using experimental data in order to speculate. Science does, however, prove certain objective facts.




My comment states that our language itself is based on differentiating between persons, places, actions, events, and things. Without this, verbal communication is ineffective because it fails to give a mutual understanding that is key to the development of complex society.



Therefore a girl who prefers to climb trees and play with trucks should automatically be classified as of the male gender?

No, it relates to personal identity developing contrary to socially particular and socially constructed gender expectations as relates to readily observable physical appearance; how this correlates to biological reality cannot be determined based on our currently limited knowledge about the significant biological factors involved.

Gender assignment very rarely entails examining chromosomes. Sex organs can be ambiguous. The cause of infertility is utterly irrelevant. That X is medically caused in no way excludes X from being entailed in a social construct like gender.

In one gender system, giving birth three times gives rise to the possibility of becoming a man. Needless to say, such persons still have all their skeletal structure, chromosomes, sex organs, and any lack of fertility can be explained by menopause.

You challenged me to name a gender system that defies what you think biological sex is. It is not my fault if you forgot that the criteria you wish to employ are routinely defied by our own gender system. There is, evidently, nothing to prevent the development of a gender structure that classifies people strictly on the grounds of whether or not they can achieve an erection. Because gender is socially constructed, it can include any arbitrary fact as grounds for differentiating. Anything at all.


None of which is relevant, because no one is arguing otherwise. What objective fact/s do you view science as having proven, that lead to the conclusion that being transgendered is not a very real condition?

I am aware of what your comment states, it is the relevance I am asking about.


I know of no culture that (in accordance with its gender constructions) assigns individuals to a particular gender on the basis of whether or not they prefer to climb trees and play with trucks.

Time for a bit of autistic pedantry here. My position in this issue is anything but hypothetical - in is based in large part on many years of all-too-real experience. For some, this is just an "armchair discussion" that you can drift in and out of giving as much or as little thought as you want. It is central to the existence of others. Did you mean "hypothesised", perhaps? In that case, yes, my position can only be hypothesised, as is yours - at this point in human existence we do not collectively know enough for some of us to definitively answer the question of what the hell we actually are. We also object to others, with even less knowledge, since they do not share our experiences, telling us we can't possibly exist and must be mentally ill. Some are, but it is presumptuous to assume that all are, especially as early studies begin to provide some bits of evidence that there is a biological basis for at least some transsexualism.




A nice bit of verbal prestidigitation here. Make the reader see what wasn't there, and hope nobody notices. Nobody ever said that medical treatments should not be used. An effective technique, but you forgot one thing - you are wititng to an autistic audience, where many of us have the annoying tendency to see what is actually there rather than what we are led to see.

Responsible practitioners use the best available information today to assess transgendered individuals to separate those that have known biological conditions, those who seek "change" for particular societal advantages, and other reasons from those who have a persistent other-sex identification causing some impairment of clinical significance (true transsexualism or "GID"; i.e., the subject of this thread). Even for individuals diagnosed with GID, some are candidates for psychological or medical treatments; for others, the best course of action is no treatment. For others, however, conventional treatments have proven spectacularly ineffective, and the treatment regime with consistently best results is gender transition.




Suppose (yes, I'm being hypothetical here) that a rare condition, let's call it Catsberger's Syndrome, emerges by the fusion of feline DNA into a human embryo, creating a woman-cat chimera. While we're at it, let's suppose that this person grows up into a human form, but with feline instincts and a cat's sense of self. What would you call that being? In the existing linguistic nomenclature and societal constructs, there are people and there are cats. In all likelihood, our subject would be assigned to be a person, and expected to behave like other humans and suppress her felinity (while we're making up words). This person might genuinely feel like a cat, from a very early age, even if she could not explain just what that meant. With Catsberger's Syndrome being nothing more than a ridiculous, fanciful notion to them, not only would people maintain the arguable position that this person is not a cat, but they would most likely cling fiercely to the notion that the subject is just a woman, and needs to be treated for this "cat thing" and just get on with it. Most cats would probably have a curious affinity for the subject, with many having perhaps an outright acceptance. Reality is that the subject is something with no current name in the language and no real place in society, seeking acceptance among those with which she genuinely feels she belongs. While she may never discover what she really is, she would certainly appreciate that people at least consider that her experiences are real.

As a separate matter, linguistic categorical separations usually have problem cases that don't fit. There are men and there are women. What category would you consider a person with a pure 46XY karyotype and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, who therefore has no internal reproductive organs, female genitalia and identifies as female? Now how would you classify a post-operative male-to-female transsexual with no other type of intersex condition? Were your answers different? If so, why - there is not a lick of difference, genetically, phenotypically or in identity - between the two. This leaves explanations such as personal biases to account for the differential classification.

People will be sceptical of differences and be inclined to evaluate them based on their own knowledge and experience. Fair enough. They will also allow their biases to sway their opinions. My biggest objection is to those that advance their opinions as incontrovertible fact and do not acknowledge that there is uncertainty and they might be wrong. Centuries ago, white people believed that black people were not human. They were wrong. In the 1900s, people believed that no homosexual could have been born that way. Some still believe that today. They are probably wrong. Today, many people believe that neurological intersex conditions do not exist. They too are probably wrong. Most people don't believe that human-animal chimeras exist. They are probably right. When people start to see examples of things, they begin to consider that they might be real. When they see incontrovertible evidence, all but the most stubborn accept that the thing is real.



Another attempt at linguistic legerdemain, and an amateurish one at that. Nobody is suggesting that we unquestioningly take every claimant's word in all situations. All I am saying is that there are occasions where you ought to at least consider one's accounts of their experiences.

If the people that believe in Jesus Christ are correct, then some day one person making that claim will actually be speaking the truth. Before then, in all likelihood, millions more will make that claim falsely, even though they themselves might believe it to be true. A rational person not recently emerged from solitary cave confinement will probably have a sense that the accuracy rate of such claims is so near zero and the claim is so significant a thing that 1) their initial response will be to "go with the odds" and disbelieve it, and 2) require an exceptionally high standard of evidence to even consider the claim as plausible. The real Jesus Christ will have some convincing to do, and He knows it.




I agree here, but perhaps in a different direction. I see the "autistic space" as representable (approximately, quantifying these things is always challenging) in two dimensions - degree of autistic features in one dimension and functioning level in the other. Asperger's and Kanner's autism appear in separate but overlapping parts of the space, with Asperger's not appearing in the lower-functioning end and Kanner's not represented, or less densely represented, in the lower severity/higher functioning corner. Both types span the entire range of degree of autistic characteristics - Asperger's autism is not necessarily "mild autism"; it is simply a different manifestation of autism from Kanner's variety. A substantial part of the space is covered by both, with the categorical difference based on the presentation of the autistic characteristics. For example, a person with strong autistic characteristics in all three areas of the trial of impairments, significant sensory integration issues, prosopagnosia, alexithymia, dyspraxia, a high raw cognitive ability but a moderate overall functioning level, and maybe even some unusual "savant" abilities might be categorised as Asperger's if they were communicative and not obviously impaired in cognitive learning but high-functioning Kanner's autism if they didn't speak and learned only when they wanted to. Even if it is demonstrated that there is no aetiological difference between the two, there appears to be sufficient clustering of presentations to make the categories useful, even if not everyone fits neatly into one of them.

Outwardly, in some respects (facial hair, genitilia, voice) I am male. In other respects (not much facial hair,fat deposits, some breast development) I am female. Examining my chromosomes, I have an X and another X and a Y. "47,XXY Male" is the official medical term., though I don't see myself as being one or the other, and in fact some experts in the field are coming around to considering it an intersex condition.

For some time, it's been common practice in western medicine for intersexed newborns with ambiguous genitalia to be surgically assigned whatever sex they most resemble at birth, and until quite recently often without the parents being told. I suspect this might have been my fate, especially since there were other complications with my birth providing opportunity - a mass of brain and other tissues attached to the base of my spine - (possibly an incomplete twin) that needed removing. That is another matter though.

So though I can't honestly say I am either gender, I don't see it as a disorder - it's just the way I'm put together.

Well I don't think I would qualify as having GID I do have dominent feminine traits. I'm ok with being male for the most part and I'm not interested in guys at all so I'm not gay/bi but sometimes I wonder if life till this point might've been easier if I was a girl. But as I said I'm ok with being male, the only thing I am seriously considering is getting my facial hair removed permenently. I entertain myself sometime by taking "What Gender is your Brain" Tests online and they always come back 75%+ Feminine. All but 1 or 2 of my friends are LGBTQ and they describe me as the "Gayest Straight Man Alive" Whic again I'm fine with. One thing I really love about my feminine traits is that even with my AS Social Skills (IE Lacking) I am good at listening to peoples problems and offering help. I still suck at reading body language and have pretty poor empathy but as long as someone explains their emotions and problems to me I'm very good and being there for them. But I've digressed so...

The question was gender issues, not as specific as gender identity disorder.
My SO and I have gender 'issues', my sister is trans, and I know another trans woman who probably has AS.

I'm glad to be female.

Eh, I define gender by physical characteristics. So no, I don't have any gender issues.

Thats physical gender not psychological gender. This thread is asking about the latter. For example I'm a male but my mind is more female. I don't have a strong desire to be female I just tend to think more along those lines and find more in common with female peers in my mannerisms, interests and traits.

My mom said I was a tom boy growing up but I wore girl clothes, did girl things like playing with dolls.

Same here. Well, I wanted to be a boy. And I would still prefer to be a boy, but a girl body works just as well and being a girl has some practical advantages, so I don't let it bother me.

Hey I wanted to be a boy for a short bit because they had a penis and I thought it be cool to go standing without having to pull down my pants.

As I said: I define gender by physical characteristics.

Yes and I understand that but what I was saying is that this thread is asking only about the psychological part. Therefore physical gender is irrelevant in this thread.