I don't have any special expertise here, but just abstractly, the concepts are reasonable. The flaw in your analogy is that there's no biological way you might "be" a tiger, whereas male and female are both expressions of basic human biology. And even very crudely, it's possible to push that biology in either direction with hormones doses (i.e., taking larges dose of the relevant horomone can create *secondary* sex characteristics, whereas no amount of tiger's milk is going to make you in any way like a tiger) [There was a old comic-book superhero "Black Condor" who had the origin that he was abandoned as an infant and raised by condors, and learned to fly by watching his nest-mates - I am not making this up.]

So *if* one believes that there's some sort of intrinsic non-genital aspect that *usually* matches genitals, but sometimes doesn't - like orientation is usually opposite genitals, but sometimes not - then it's *possible* there's a very real phenomena here.

Seth has already stated my thoughts: The Ethan/tiger analogy is in no way applicable to the male/female issue. Though men and women oftentimes *seem* like different species, they're not. The bigger issue I'd raise is that you, as a self-proclaimed and -understood "hetero," have absolutely know way of understanding the inner turmoil felt by those who feel trapped in the wrong body. Do you think that anyone would undergo such a drastic transformation casually? I'm sure there are physiological and emotional and mental factors at play that we can't begin to fathom. On a much less intense level, perhaps it's like skinny people who see fat people and say, "Well, just stop eating." As if that notion had simply never occured to the fat people. No, it's not that easy, and there is a lot of physical and mental and emotional work to do to shed the weight. But a transformation eventually occurs. Now, you can argue that my analogy doesn't hold up, either, because we're talking about going from fat to thin, not male to female. It's not the same, I grant you. But the point is that unless you're the person having the experience, you can't truly understand what the experience feels like and you can't know how you'd react in the same circumstance. People who undergo these operations (at one of my jobs, we had a security guard who went from male to female) are required to undergo counseling beforehand. No doctor just says, "Sure, make an appointment and we'll make you a woman." Maybe a lot of the desire to change stems from psychological places, but those feelings can be uncovered before the transition. For those whose biology is more ambiguous, though, no amount of counseling will be enough.

Thank you Seth and Beth for your comments. I agree that my "tiger" analogy was hackneyed and didn't really do justice to my thought process on this issue. What I was reaching for, and missing, was spelled out more in my "total emasculation" analogy: Removal of one's genitals and replacing them with the opposite set does not automatically confer the opposite gender characteristics on the practitioner.

I am cognizant that sexual reassignment surgery isn't something that someone can "just" do. As opposed to tattoos and body piercing. But here is the crux of my resistance to the idea of transgendering: How do you know that you are truly a [pick a gender] trapped in the body of a [pick another gender]? Knowing one's sexual orientation is one thing, but to me, this is fundamentally much murkier and harder to pin down. Easy for me to say as I am not wrestling with such questions myself.

I think that fundamentally, that's an incredibly strong statement to make, and I am unsure how it can be proven empirically. But such is my nature that I have to ask, I suppose. This may be ham-handed of me, but I think I might propose that I know I wasn't meant to be born a tiger or something else because I was born what I am. This gets into God issues, etc, and again the train flies off the rails of hard and fast empiricism.

Again, not having all of the facts or living this situation myself, one question I also have is what sort of bar must be passed for agreement to be made that someone really was "born wrong" and this surgery is the solution. I am leaving aside issues such as androgeny or ambiguity as I think a stronger case can be made for going one direction or another. But barring those sorts of scenarios, I am at a loss for an emprical standard for how such claims can be a) made and b) verified.

I figure I'm in enough hot water as it is, but I want to stress that I am not impugning anyone's basic humanity, and as I reflect on this issue I can see ways that I can get smacked down with a load of logic. Perhaps that's the problem: This is a topic wrapped up in a blend of empirical science and medicine AND philosophy, faith, and theology.

In any case, I appreciate the patience with my ignorance on this subject. I prefer getting smacked down to bottling everything up internally and developing a concrete mind: All mixed up and set in stone.

While again I'll disclaim I have no direct knowledge, or proof to offer, there's a very reasonable theoretical underpinning to the claims. If you read about some of the functioning of the brain, i.e. neurology, there's a complicated mechanism having to do with how do you know that your arm is your arm, or your leg is your leg? That sounds like nonsense, but it's very real. There's apparently a "body schema" that you carry around in the brain, which is usually connected to your actual body, but not the same thing. This is very obvious in "phantom limbs", where an amputated limb is sometimes still "felt" at some level, even though the person knows it's not there. Some very low-level part of the brain hasn't re-adjusted, or is fooled somehow.

There's weirder things, where some people get the idea that their limbs are not a part of them. Somehow the schema in the brain has become damaged, and no longer matches the physical body.

From this, it's not too much of leap to *conjecture* that there's cases where the brain's body schema might develop opposite the actual body. In a way, it's "phantom limb" applied to genitals.

This can't be *proven* with the current state of neurological knowledge. But it's possible to see that if the brain's "body schema" could be determined in detail (which can't be done now, but will certainly be possible at some point in the future), this would follow immediately.

Eth:
Yup, there's more to the transgender issue than that that can be "proven." I am not a religious person, but do consider myself very spiritual, and this entire discussion can be understood in terms of faith. No one can prove that God exists, but that doesn't stop people like my mother from living their lives around their belief of God. They just *know* that God is in their lives and proceed from there. The same can be said, I guess, for transgendered people. They just know that they're in the wrong body. Some might argue that God doesn't make mistakes, that everything is always as it should be, but that presupposes a belief in God. And it also presumes that man has played no role in screwing up what God created. Maybe He created everything to be perfect, but we've screwed it all up. Global warming, anyone? I have a cousin who needed a kidney transplant for years, yet she refused. "God will heal me," she'd insist. No, we'd counter, God created doctors who know how to perform kidney transplants and gave you brothers who are willing, matching donors. I know that logic-minded folk hate stuff that they can't observe in a test tube. My head hurts everytime I try to ponder that the universe is infinite. But sometimes, you just have to accept something for what it is and stop trying to wrap your brain around it. Something are outside the realm of empiricism and understanding. Some things just demand acceptance.

... thank you for having it! For me, it's encouraging to read someone's thought process as they grapple with a subject like this - because I know just how confusing it can be. And that's why I decided to write about my experience of being trans as part of my blog - because *I* found it confusing when I finally accepted that I was trans, saw the confusion of friends, family and colleagues as *they* tried to understand what I was going through - and why.

We could debate "what makes a man a man, and a woman a woman" until the cows come home - and still not reach a concensus. If it's just down to natural biology, does that make the six foot tall man with an eight inch penis "more" of a man than the six foot tall man with a five inch penis? Does it mean that a man who is infertile is "less" of a man than a man whose sperm are viable? When meeting someone for the first time, do you require them to drop their trousers or lift their skirt in order for you to check out their genitalia, so that you can decide whether they're a man or a woman? ;-) I suspect not - at least, I *hope* not!

A friend of mine is very keen on the "three paragraph" rule for comments - if a comment needs more than three paragraphs, it should be replaced by a blog post. Since I'm now on my third paragraph (although I suspect paragraph breaks are being stripped out here) let me just say this - I don't think *anybody* who doesn't have the body / identity mismatch which characterises transsexuality can imagine how it feels to have that mismatch. And I'm glad about that - I wouldn't wish the pain of that mismatch on anybody. The challenge for someone without it - someone like you, Ethan - is to decide whether that means you think it therefore can't possibly exist - and thus that "people like me" are mad, deluded, deranged, misguided or whatever. Or, to decide that it just *might* exist - to be very grateful that of all life's travails, at least this is one that you'll never have to endure - and that those who seek a solution (surgical, hormonal or whatever) to that mismatch in their own life are no less worthy than someone who needs insulin for diabetes or open-heart surgery for a congenital coronary defect. No more worthy - but certainly no less.

Again, thank you for making this post - and if you want to continue the discussion with someone who's travelled the path that mystifies you, just ask.