“I believe that transsexuals are intersexed individuals.”
Author:
Bhakti Ananda Goswami, OII USA
“I believe that transsexuals are intersexed individuals.”
Dr Milton Diamond’s quote as above in context:
“Second, I know that my thoughts on this matter are a minority view among colleagues and fellow scientists. I maintain them, nevertheless, as derived from my own clinical experiences, my own experimental human and animal research, and knowledge of the research of others.
I believe that transsexuals are intersexed individuals.”
THIS is what I have always maintained, based upon both human and animal studies. Just as humans have an innate language ability, but learn specific languages, gendered behavior is also innate in many species, including the human species, but specific elements of masculine or feminine sex-signaling may differ from one culture to another.
However, it seems that across cultures some behaviors are rather consistently displayed and ‘read’ as feminine and others as masculine. In non-humans, which display sex-dimorphic mating and social behaviors, it is considered a clear indication of cross-sexed masculinization or feminization if any of the individual’s related sex-signaling or responding is the opposite of what is expected for its ‘sex’. Such individuals may either and/or signal or respond in a single, or many ways, that is/are unexpected in their chromosomal or phenotypal sex.
Other than human animals may be naturally XX or XY phenotypally “sex-reversed”, or they may be ‘normal’ XX-female or XY-male in phenotype/anatomy but behaviorally sex-reversed.
‘Human’ Behaviors Commonly Observed in Other Species
IN animal studies, if any single element of an individual’s ‘language’ of sex-signaling or responding is cross-sexed, that individual is assumed to have some physical , some neuroendocrinological, or some biological reason for the specific behavior.
‘Psychology’ and religion have nothing to do with it. If a ‘male’ bird sings the exclusively female part in a mating duet, or a ‘male’ rat displays female-like “lordosis behavior” or sexual receptivity to males, real scientists assume that there is some actual biological cause.
If a ‘female’ mammal mounts and tries to penetrate females and displays male-pattern aggression in the company of males, and will not sexually submit to them, real scientists assume that there is some actual biological cause. Thus, with real objective scientists studying such causes and mechanisms, there has been great advancement in the basic life sciences, through the study of sex and/or gendered behavior in non-human species.
Unfortunately human-relevant information from these animal studies has been denied, filtered, abused, distorted and outright suppressed in the medical ethics, legal (human rights) and social justice spheres of social influence, by activists in both the pseudosciences of psychology and psychiatry, and in religion.
Furthermore feminists have also been guilty of denying, misusing and suppressing the basic research results about human ‘gender’ and sexuality in the context of animal studies. Both anti-scientific religious fundamentalists and psych professional pseudo-scientists of the ‘mind’ cannot afford to allow humanity to understand the basic truth about human sexual differentiation and behavior. These people are too personally and professionally invested in their psychological and religious fantasies about a kind of simple sexual dimorphism that does not exist to ever admit the truth.
The Basic Biology of Sex Differentiation
IF humanity understood the basic biology of sex differentiation and sex-dimorphic behavior in all species, including our own, it would simply put sexist religious fundamentalism, and the quacks of psychology and psychiatry, out of business.
It would also require certain feminist psychological premises to be reconsidered and abandoned. Thus to protect the world-view and sociopolitical interests of these religionists, sexists and quacks, humanity’s attention must be diverted away from the vast amount of evidence that is now available from animal research in sex differentiation, reproductive biology and neuroendocrinology.
Among the sexist psych professionals, feminists and religionists, their ‘mind’/mental, nurture-not-nature and/or ‘spiritual’ paradigms must not be endangered, and so they must even band together as the most bizarre of ‘bedfellows’ to stop the scientific facts of animal and human sex differentiation and related sex-dimorphic behavior from influencing the masses.
One example of this new alliance in action is the recent attempt of some psych professionals, feminists and religionists to control and re-direct the medial ethics, legal and social discourses involving these issues by replacing the general scientific term ‘intersex’ with the new human medical term ‘Disorder(s) of Sex Development’ (DSD).
Neither Rare nor Human-only
WHAT the use of this term will increasingly do is disconnect the public’s perception of human sexual differences from the greater context of all other life on Earth, making intersex, natural XX and XY sex-reversal and cross-sexed behaviors seem a rare and isolated human-only phenomenon, when these things are not at all rare or human isolated.
Whether a cross-sexed or atypical gendered behavior is persistent or episodic in an individual, it has real-world physical mechanisms and causes. Even in what is a learned behavior, the impetus and capacity to learn must first be there. So, in the very same way, human sex and gender related behaviors ultimately have biological causations and mechanisms.
Why are some otherwise apparently physically ‘normal’ men compelled to live entirely as women, being exclusively receptive in sexual acts with men? And, why are others compelled to only occasionally dress-up and pass as women?
Regarding such questions, all of the nonsense speculations and spurious issues related to ‘psychology’ and religion are exposed when one considers the biology of sex and/or gender-related ‘displaying’ and sex-signaling and responding in countless species. If human reproductive sex-signaling and response and other gendered behavior is actually viewed objectively in the context of animal studies, it is clear that all persistent and even temporary compulsions to ‘display’ or sex-signal are biologically based.
How people respond to sex signaling is also biologically based. Thus a sexually mature male who is not attracted to women is simply not responding to their sex signaling. No amount of ‘reparative’ psych talk therapy or religious counselling is going to change this actual biologically-based non-response to women. It has long been known that there are critical times of development in utero, when the fetus is experiencing sex-hormone related neurological development, which will influence and even control its behaviour for the rest of its life.
When will we recognize this fact, when it comes to both the individual’s innate sense of self and ‘gender identity’ and their gendered behaviour and sexual behaviour post puberty?
I applaud Dr Diamond for defying the majority of his colleagues, by saying what needs to be said now more than ever. However, I think that the majority of scientists working in nonhuman biology would be his natural allies if invited to contribute their objective ’2 cents-worth’ into the discourse.
From Bugs to Humans, the Causes are Similar
FROM bugs and amphibians to mammals and human beings, the physical causes and mechanisms of sex differentiation and related sex-dimorphic behaviour, sex signaling and response are similar or the same. Thus human gendered behaviour, gender identity and sexuality should logically be examined in this context.
Humanity is a part of nature as much as any other species of this world. Our bodies are made of the same stuff, behaving in the same way as in other species. This stuff, the cells, tissues, neurochemicals and so on does not suddenly cease to obey the ‘laws of nature’ when it is in a human body.
This stuff does not care about what some Freudian psychologist, feminist or religious fundamentalist says, it just goes on obeying the laws of nature. As long as we are trying to understand the physical stuff of our bodies by studying the ‘mental’ speculations of Freud and so on, feminists and religious fundamentalists, we will not progress as individuals and societies.
We should not…
WE should not be studying some pseudo-scientific crackpot’s or religious fundamentalist’s idea of the ‘mind’ when we should be studying the actual real-world brain.
We should not be looking for some satanic or remote ‘karmic’ or divine predestined disapproval causation for human intersex.
Instead we should observe how and why intersex classes of beings and individuals function throughout nature, and how these add to the success of their societies and the viability of their species.
