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autolenaphilia · 1 year

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I actually own a copy of this quaint 70s paperback edition. Early example of the transition timeline.

The memoir Conundrum by Jan Morris (1926-2020) created quite a stir when it was first published in 1974. It was not the first entry into the genre “memoirs by trans women about being trans”, Morris herself brings up Lili Elbe’s book (although it might be ghostwritten), and Christine Jorgensen and Hedy Jo Star had written and published memoirs before.

But Morris was a special case. She was probably the first trans person to be famous before transitioning, Jorgensen became famous because she transitioned. And she was no showgirl like Star but a serious writer, a member of the British literary establishment and one of the most respected travel writer and journalist of her day. Conundrum was probably the most respectable account of transitioning available in the 1970s.

That didn’t mean it had an easy reception. Many of the reviews were quite scathing of Morris and her ideas on gender and womanhood. Of course, these negative reviews were often very transmisogynistic, and Morris became a negative example of how transfemininity is all about gender stereotypes and misogynistic ideas about what it means to be a woman. Janice Raymond in the ur-terf text The Transsexual Empire refers to Morris quite heavily.

And reading it now, in 2023, there is a lot in the book that is worthy of criticism. Morris saw gender in binary and essentialistic ways, and writes of her transition in these terms. Morris saw traditionally feminine traits as innate to her womanhood. While she condemns misogyny and sympathizes with feminism, her writing indulges quite shamelessly in feminine stereotypes in the text and views them as natural. She even quotes C.S. Lewis approvingly about the gender binary being a “fundamental polarity which divides all created beings.” Terfs even today think trans people all believe in gender as being some mystical religious quality and I think it is a distant echo of the 70s-era fixation on Morris, who did in fact believe gender has some spiritual quality to it.

Morris was a believer in the idea of the “true transsexual” who knows from childhood and distinguishes them from the misguided trans people (like “homosexuals” and “transvestites”) who transition in error. Unlike modern truscum, she literally was treated by Harry Benjamin. And like all “true transsexual” narratives it sometimes seems tailored to appeal to cis tastes. Morris for example seems to downplay her obviously close relationship to her wife as mere close friendship while playing up her attraction to men, for the same reason that Morris had to divorce her wife as part of her transition.

There are other problematic things in the book. Morris came from a position of class privilege and was educated at an Oxford public school and was raised during the waning days of the British Empire, and she never really challenged that upbringing despite her transition. Morris was very well-travelled, but her worldview of non-white people are often racist and exoticizing and condescending at best. Even her positive depictions of non-white people come across as the exoticized “noble savage” or the orientalist trope of “Eastern Wise man”.

So in modern terms, Jan Morris had some bad takes, problematic writer for sure. And yet, the negative response to her book has been poisoned by transmisogyny. The criticism lacked nuance and was focused on invalidating her womanhood because of her internalized transmisogyny. The faults of Jan Morris as an individual quickly became ascribed to all trans women in ways that might echo even today in the anglophone debate. And due to transmisogyny, she has been judged more harshly for her failings than men or even cis women would be. The fact that most cis women have internalized misogyny, many of them severe, is often forgotten in the debate about how trans women are all problematic misogynists.

And Morris didn’t represent all trans women, far from it. And she was somewhat of an anachronism even when the book was written. She was 48 years old when the book was published, and had started transitioning around 1964. As it was written a younger generation of trans women in the post-stonewall era were challenging the narratives of womanhood and transsexuality in ways that Morris refused to do. In fact some of the more insightful criticism of Morris comes from Sandy Stone’s transfeminist classic The Empire strikes Back.

Conundrum and Jan Morris as a writer still have virtues. I don’t read to get my views affirmed or to read about paragons of virtue, I do it to read about interesting people, real or fictional. And Jan Morris was a very interesting person. She had an incredibly colorful life, and the book is full of vivid depictions of places and experiences that are now lost (even if many of these practices died for good reason). The writings about public school life, of British military life in the 1940s, of traveling across the world as a journalist, of places where Morris lived, of being trans in the mid 20th century, of transitioning in the 1960s and 70s, including a description of the Casablanca clinic of surgeon Georges Burou are well worth reading. And despite all of her prejudices and reliance on clichés about non-white people she was admired as a writer for a reason, it’s a well-written book. If you read it as an account of a flawed but accomplished and interesting trans woman, and not as some authoritative guide to gender, womanhood and transsexuality, it still has tremendous value.

#jan morris #conundrum #my writings

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combonews · 2 years

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Four people co-founded Constellation Labs (CST): Benjamin Jorgensen, Benjamin Diggles, Mathias Goldmann, and Wyatt Meldman-Floch.

Benjamin J. Jorgensen is CEO at DAG Labs. Previously, he was the founding CEO of Klick Push and is also one of the co-owners of MZ Dining Group (Ittoryu Gozu) and the owner of A5 Meats.

#Constellation

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aboobackersiddiq · 2 years

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The topic which I selected was the impact of electricity on life with Timothy Jorgensen. the reason for selection of this topic was the relevancy of the topic and the contribution that electricity has given to revolutionize sector medicine etc. I was curious to know about the history, evolutions, implication and contributions that electricity has given to the all kind. The podcasts Bridging the gaps; a portal for curious minds has given me a transparent insight about electricity. Timothy Jorgensen is full time professor of radiation, medicine and director of health physics radiation protection graduate programs at georgetown university in Washington dc, he is the author of the book Spark: the life of electricity and electricity of life. He is interested in worldwide public health issues involving radiation exposure, such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents that released radioactivity into the environment and poisoned the oceans. He is also interested by the danger that nuclear terrorism poses to public health worldwide. The book Strange Glow was written by him. The tale of Radiation is a book that informs the general public at the technical and scientific aspects of radiation threat issues. In many respects, Spark is a sequel to Strange Glow. The narrative and conversational tones in the two novels are identical. They both use the identical approach for communicating science, that is to weave human interest stories around scientific ideas. Additionally, the 2 novels' topics are similar.

The discussion in this podcast between Waseem Akhtar and Timothy Jorgensen is about Timothy Jorgensen’s new book spark and how he explains the science of electricity through the lenses of biology, medicine and history through his book.it illustrates how our understanding of electricity and the neurological system evolved in parallel, using fascinating stories of scientists and personalities ranging from Benjamin franklin to elon musk and it provides an fascinating outlook at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without. from history to contribution that even a newbie to electricity can understand the stuffs for me as student for IT Background found it interesting and all the 60 minutes kept me engaged and curious to know about electricity.

The discussion has given me a chance to learn a lot electricity and the points which I have extracted from the podcasts as follows

The discussion begins with some earliest known experiences that human had with electricity. this section commenced with the term called amber, amber was most likely the first material with which humans attempted to control electricity mostly for medical purposes. Amber is fossilized tree resin ,in Greek and Latin the word amber is electrical. its categorised as a gemstone. In earlier days people believe it as a mystical property due to its some kinds special behaviours. when an amber rubs with a wall or some other materials would result in a shock. the humans used this kind of amber mystical qualities as a health aid such as finding disease out of our human body by rubbing it on your body and grinding up the amber particles and putting into medicines etc. The peoples believed that they had magical powers and could be exploded for the betterment of human lives.in earlier times romans used non static electricity from specific type of fish as well, there are many kinds of electric fishes through out the world and used them as health aid as well. the romance recorded that these kinds of fishes were useful for treating headaches in human bodies.

Second part of this discussion was about how Benjamin franklin attempted to control the power of electricity. he used to slaughter a turkey with electricity, He is initially electrocuted by a thunderstorm.

The next part was about Luigi Galvani's experiments utilizing electricity on dead frogs and his nephew's experiments on dead people. his experiments and strategies were kind of awkward. The best part about this issue is that no doctors were involved in this study. Doctors make up one of the main customers for generators. The other frog experiment involved hanging the frog's leg from iron fans with brass hooks, and everyone made fun of him for thinking that the fans were making electricity. Then he realized that he had a new idea—electricity could be produced by electricity—instead of using a frog's leg to generate electricity

Reference : https://www.timothyjorgensen.com/index.htm

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sweettomatosalad · 2 years

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The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life

Brindging The Gaps - Spark : The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life[1] [2]

Timothy J. Jorgensen[3] [4] is professor of radiation medicine. Director of the health and radiation program at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. He wrote two books, the first one being : “strange glow”[5] (22 August 2017) tells the story of the radioactivity. From its discovery up to the recent debates on the radioactive plant debates and crisis. Its second book is : “Spark : The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life”[6] (23 November 2021), this latter retraces the story of electricity. From its discovery, to cutting edge researches on health devices using electricity.

According to Tim, the history of electricity started at prehistoric times with amber. Amber is a tree resin, and the prehistoric humans realized that by rubbing amber with wool, you could have an electric shock. That was caused by static electricity, they started to think it could heal the body ; but didn’t have real evidences. They started to call materials that can conduct electricity : “electrica” which means amber like. Later the Germans while fishing where capturing electric fish. They could make an electric shock when touching it by hand, with a conductive stick or even when being close to them in the water. They also tried to heal diseases with the electric fishes. Later in the 1750’s, a great invention called Leiden jar allowed you to store electricity, it was basically a capacitor. Benjamin Franklin used some to kill and cook a turkey, he said it made the flesh softer (it wasn’t true). He even shocked himself with the Leiden jar, he was very embarrassed about it. Franklin wanted to try to charge a Leiden jar with a kite flying in the air. But French scientists were faster and made it with a lightning rod. At the time there were no measuring instruments, so they counted the number of Leiden jar. And since you needed a lot of them in series, scientists began to call it a battery of Leiden jar. Like the military device, the term got corrupted later and describes the batteries known today. But batteries we know today are called electrochemical batteries. They are not exactly like Leiden jar that are more like capacitors. The electrochemical battery was discovered by Volta. He wanted to make an artificial electric fish organ, but he instead created the electrochemical battery. At the same period, Galvani made an experiment where he made frog legs move thanks to electricity. When Volta looked at the experiment, he saw a brass hook and an iron fence. And using 2 different metals are the basic of building a battery. Therefore, he deduced the electricity came from the frog, as if there would have been an “animal electricity”. It was a huge debate going on between Galvani and Volta to understand if the electricity came from the frog or if the electricity made the frog legs move. The truth being in the middle as often. Galvani nephew made experiment by electrocuting corpses. It is told that his experiments gave the idea to Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein book. Since electricity had no use without motors or light bulbs, people started using it to try to cure themselves. For example, people called electricians would shock you for medical purposes. You could also buy a kit containing a battery and electrodes that you should wear to cure any disease. A law was passed forbidding people to sell devices as medical without scientific evidences. Therefore, these compagnies started to disappear and were synonym of scam.

The nervous system of the body is a system that allows you to control your muscles, but also allows you to retrieve the information from your skin, eyes etc… The nervous system only works thanks to electricity. It uses electricity signals to encode this information and make it travel very fast. That is why you instantly feel it when you hurt yourself. This nervous system is sometimes stopped by chemical bridges. There are locations in the body where there are no nerves or they are not relevant ; in this case, there is usually a chemical bridge that transfers the information to the other nerve. These chemical stops help to regulate the overall system.

Nowadays, there are regulated medical implants that really work. The most famous one is the pacemaker. It allows you to externally regulate the pace of your heart. It can save the life of people that have cardiovascular problems. There is also the cochlear implant, this device allows deaf people to hear. It is mainly composed of a microphone, a processor and an electrode. The processor converts sound of the microphone into electric pulses sent to the electrode. The electrode stimulates the nerves and allows people to hear.

We have talked about implants but we haven’t talked about brain implants that are a real field. Some implants are only inserted at the surface of the brain. But other especially for the Parkinson disease are inserted deeply in the brain. In both cases it is a complex surgical procedure that can lead to bleeding or infection issues.

Currently, there is a device called Utah Arrays[7] or MEAs (Micro Electrode Arrays)[8] . It was developed by the Utah university and allows you to hook up to 110 electrodes to the brain surface.

There are cutting edge research that try to interface MEAs to robotic limbs. It would allow disabled persons to walk again. But at the moment there are limitations to these prosthetics. They are heavy, have a low battery life and can’t be actuated unconsciously. It is annoying, it means you must think about moving your arm to effectively move it. A simple task like opening the tap would become : Move my arm towards the tap, grab it at the right pressure, move it but not too far. This is complicate and not user friendly at all. Moreover, handling objects with precision is very hard because there is a risk of crushing them. It is because yet you don’t have the sense of touch with these prosthetics. Now cutting-edge researches are made to include the sense of touch. It would make a feedback loop and enable being a lot more precise.

Elon Musk is going even further with Neural Link[9] . So far, we don’t put more than 110 electrodes, the MEAs are limited. The idea behind Neural Link is to minimize the technology of the MEA to be able to fit an order of magnitude more electrodes in the brain. It is like a sewing machine that sews electrodes in the brain. Neural Link has already been tested on pigs and monkeys with success, now the objective is to test it on a human being.

Many questions ethical questions[10] arise from these cutting-edge researches. Does it mean we could be able to control a human’s body without his agreement ? Could we insert fake memories into a human being ?

[1] - bridgingthegaps

[2] - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691197838/spark

[3] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-j-jorgensen-2864a717/

[4] - https://www.timothyjorgensen.com/

[5] - https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Glow-Radiation-Timothy-Jorgensen/dp/0691178348

[6] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spark-Life-Electricity/dp/0691197830

[7] - https://blackrockneurotech.com/research/utah-array/

[8] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectrode_array

[9] - https://neuralink.com/approach/

[10] - Hardware risks of neural implants Science Direct

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summerslobster · 2 years

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Spark: The Life of Electricity and The Electricity of Life.

Today’s post is about electricity which is interesting so I recommend to listen to it as well and this is the link Click. The researcher is Timothy Jorgensen(1) who is a Professor in the Department of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University and the writer of the book; Spark: The Life of Electricity and The Electricity of Life (Princeton University Press, 2021)(2).Timothy says the life is nothing without electricity. The story about electricity starts from an oldest material and the story finishes possible uses of electricity in the future.

Timothy introduced some interesting behind stories about experiment with electricity as we may expect that some times ‘Scientific Discoveries’ are happened by accident.

Mysterious material Amber(3)

I believe that people know of amber as a gemstone which is the first gemstone which people wore it as jewellery since Neolithic period or stone age but it was also the first material with which human attempted to harness electricity but mainly it has been used for medical purposes. The researcher, Timothy said that once it gets rubbed enough and when you touch it, it will give you a shock. It was the first experience with electricity which people had. For these reason, it has been believed that it has a magical power so people used to use it for medical purposes.

Benjamin Franklin fancied turkeys.(4)

Benjamin Franklin who we all know of got shocked himself by electricity while trying to electrocute a turkey as he believed electrocuting the turkey made it uncommonly tender and he did not want anyone to know the accident because he felt so embarrassed. Thanks to this accident electrocution has been used and developed in various ways to enhance the quality of meat and also because of its efficiency ever since. It is believed that it does improve meat’s tenderness and colour as well. (Efficacy of Carcass Electrical Stimulation in Meat Quality Enhancement)(5)

The Real Electric Frankenstein Experiments of the 1800s(6)

Some scientists in the 1800s actually did experiments on human bodies which had murdered or executed to prove that the stimulation of muscles with pulses of electrical current. And this theory and experiments inspired Mary Shelley who is the author of Frankenstein.

-References-

1. The researcher, Timothy Jorgensen

https://www.timothyjorgensen.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-j-jorgensen-2864a717

2. The book, Spark: The Life of Electricity and The Electricity of Life.

3. Use and history of Amber.

4. Benjamin Franklin

5. Efficacy of Carcass Electrical Stimulation in Meat Quality Enhancement: A Review

6. The Real Electric Frankenstein Experiments of the 1800s

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researchmethod3098503 · 2 years

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Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life" with Professor Timothy Jorgensen

When I saw the title about “The life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life”, I thought it should be really close to people’s life, because we can’t do most things without electricity, for instance, the technology is very advanced nowadays, the first thing is mobile phone, everyone needs to charge it every day, and seldom use batteries actually, even if we use batteries, there are so many rechargeable batteries, so we can't really live without electricity. That’s why I would like to understand what the professor Timothy Jorgensen will say.

This guest who was invited to Bridging the Gap is Timothy Jorgensen, he is a Professor in the Departments of Radiation Medicine and Biochemistry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington DC. He is also the Chair of Georgetown's Radiation Safety Committee, a Consociate Member of the National Council on Radiation Protection, and a member of the DC Science Writers Association. Dr. Jorgensen has appeared on many national news programs and podcasts, explaining to the general public the risks and benefits of radiation and electrical technologies. He is the 2017 recipient of the AIP Science Communication Award, bestowed annually by the American Institute of Physics. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

Timothy J. Jorgensen’s website: https://www.timothyjorgensen.com/bio.htm

Bridging the Gap: https://soundcloud.com/bridging-the-gaps/spark-the-life-of-electricity-and-the-electricity-of-life-with-professor-timothy-jorgensen

Timothy Jorgensen mentioned that there were electric fish had found out at ancient time, in the beginning, they didn’t know the fish has electric and they can attack people, but they found out if someone try to catch them from their nest or if someone got even close to in in the water, they could shoot any intruders.

On the other hand, according to ancient Egyptian books written in 2750 BC, these fish were called "the thunder messengers of the Nile" and were the protectors of all other fish. As well as, after the ancient Egyptian books, he said that the people gradually believed the fish had electrical properties and they guessed if they have electrical properties, they were probably work as well to treat disease and so that the ancient Romans have recorded that they use these fish to treat everything. They put it on people's heads and tried to treat people’s headache. It was considered to the therapeutic and the idea was your body can feel it must be doing something or perhaps doing something good and it was common to do that to use to use electric fishes to treat diseased.

When I heard about electric can be used to treat people’s diseased, I suddenly thought about we have electric treatment nowadays, not only for western medicine, but also Chinese medicine, most people sometimes have neuralgia or muscle aches, and Chinese medicine doctor will recommend people can try to use electrotherapy to stimulate nerves or relax stiff muscles, that actually works.

And the other point is that everyone knew the lighting rod, but there are not many people know about the origin of the lightning rod. Timothy Jorgensen said that there was a person who is Benjamin Franklin, he was interested in electricity, and he did some experiments about it, he found out if we can believe the electricity out of the cloud, maybe people can prevent the cloud from sending a lightning bolt to the ground. And this was the idea that all the tall buildings would have these rods going sky leading the electricity out of them and they would never strike anything, they never produced any lightning bolts. Timothy Jorgensen It turns out that lightning rods work, but not the way Franklin thought, the way they work is that the lightning bolt actually hit the rod because it is the tallest thing in the area the electricity goes into the ground and that have the building protected, not because you can't believe enough electricity out of a cloud to stop it from striking, so this was extremely successful and effective , there are record showing that many churches in Europe hit many times and then install the lightning rod and never get enough so this was very useful and expressed throughout the world and save many lives.

And yes, it actually saves a lot of lives, even if today, there are still have people dead because of the lighting bolt, and most of them were standing in a very empty place without any buildings while there was thunder and lightning, so I agree the lighting rod is very important stuff, and it can prevent people from the lighting bolt because of it is the tallest thing.

There are few more interesting points in this interview, such as they talked about they use electricity by dead human or the author said “the life is nothing if not electrical”. If anyone wants to deeply know about it, I recommend people to listen to it on Bridging the Gap.

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blessan · 2 years

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The book "Spark: The life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life" by Timothy Jorgensen, about which I've decided to write, is on the subject of biology. Through the glasses of biology, medicine, and history, I have been able to understand the science of electricity in this conversation.

It uses interesting tales of scientists and figures ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk to show how our understanding of electricity and the nervous system developed concurrently.

It offers a fascinating look at how electricity functions and animates our lives both internally and externally.

In the past, mankind used amber to create electricity.

It seems unlikely that humans tried to harness electricity for medical purposes with this material first.

The Romans employed particular species of fish to generate non-static electricity. When people come in contact with water that contains electric eels, they get shocked.

He then went to Benjamin Franklin and used electricity to slaughter a turkey.

He is having fun with Turkey, which is why he is doing this.

He is initially electrocuted by a thunderstorm.

The following discoveries show that electrochemical reactions are all around us.

He was unaware that an electrochemical reaction could generate electricity.

Some batteries have chemical reactions that can generate power The other debate was about Luigi Galvani's experiments utilizing electricity on dead frogs and his nephew's experiments on dead people. The use of electricity in many so-called treatments for illnesses like headaches, negative thoughts, and even sexual difficulties rose in popularity. The best part about this issue is that no doctors were involved in this study. Doctors make up one of the main customers for generators. The other frog experiment involved hanging the frog's leg from iron fans with brass hooks, and everyone made fun of him for thinking that the fans were making electricity. Then he realized that he had a new idea—electricity could be produced by electricity—instead of using a frog's leg to generate electricity. Life is nothing if there is no electrical, was Timothy Jorgensen's basic idea. Here is the example: Everything is controlled by the nervous system, which is electrical in its core. Therefore, without electricity, there is no life. Without electricity, life would not exist.Timothy Jorgensen is the author of the topic study.A professor for Geogetown University's graduate radiation protection program.

He is interested in worldwide public health issues involving radiation exposure, such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents that released radioactivity into the environment and poisoned the oceans.

He is also interested in the threat that nuclear terrorism poses to public health worldwide.The book Strange Glow was written by him. The tale of Radiation is a book that informs the general public on the technical and scientific facets of radiation danger issues. In many respects, Spark is a sequel to Strange Glow. The narrative and conversational tones in the two novels are identical. They both use the same method for communicating science, which is to weave human interest stories around scientific ideas. Additionally, the two novels' subjects are similar.

My reference webpage is:global.georgetown.edu/people/timothy-jorgensen.

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stoopsmagazine · 4 years

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SOLO No. 40 doesn’t disappoint. From the photos, to the layout and art direction, to the print quality and paper, it is very solid. Benjamin Jorgensen secured the cover with a bs nosepick on some rooftop transition that looks amazing but realistically was probably a nightmare to skate, shot by Felix Adler.

The first feature is an interview with Jost Arens, a German Red Bull contest skater, skating spots atypical to what you’d imagine someone of that description skating. The fakie flip over the splashing water seen here is an example. Next is the Carhartt WIP Paris trip with a ton of sick photos by Clement Le Gall. The team manager himself, Joseph Biais, has a couple photos in it, including a crazy drop down to bs nosebluntslide, seen here. Pepe Tirelli’s gap 5-0 and Felipe Bartolome’s bridge ride were also noteworthy. The interview with Farid Ulrich gave the perspective of a DIY guy that skates for Primitive that is not the perspective of a DIY guy or what you think of someone that skate for primitive. Fast forward to Victor Casca-Rigny’s limited word interview and the photos speak enough. I’m especially partial to the kickflip boardslide on the bumpy fence shot by Roger Ferrero, footage that I’ve seen somewhere recently. The issue ended strongly with the Skatedeluxe trip to Athens, Greece, shot by Dennis Scholz. Martin Sandberg’s double rail hippy jump was tight, but what really got my attention was his back lip polejam 270 revert up the hydrant!

Solid issue guys, looking forward to the next! You can pick up a copy in the US from Theories of Atlantis.

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dailyhistoryposts · 3 years

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Harry Benjamin

A German-American doctor, Harry Benjamin (1885-1986) was widely known for his clinical work with transgender people.

Benjamin was born in Berlin and studied medicine. Though primarily he studied infectious diseases--his dissertation was on tuberculosis--he was greatly interested in sexual medicine. He met Auguste Forel (sexologist) and Magnus Hirschfeld (head of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft--Institute of Sexology that would later be burned by the Nazis) and joined them both on trips to gay bars.

In 1913, Benjamin traveled to the United States and, after the outbreak of World War I, found himself stuck there. Working first in New York and later San Francisco, Benjamin began seeing patients.

In 1948, in San Francisco, Alfred Kinsey (sexologist noted for the Kinsey scale) asked Benjamin to look at a patient who, by today's terminology, was a transgender girl. Benjamin and a number of psychiatrists, after debate, began to treat the child with estrogen and helped her and her mother travel to Germany for surgery.

Eventually, a kind of international network formed. Physicians, sexologists, and activists worked together to help trans people get affirming medical care. Surgeries were only available in Europe, but Danish law prevented sex reassignment surgeries on non-citizens, so Danish doctors would refer patients to Benjamin.

Benjamin's most famous patient--though by no means his first--was Christine Jorgensen (a World War II soldier and trans woman).

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disillusionedmonster · 2 years

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“Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality” Helene Joyce - Part 1

I finally finished reading my copy of “Trans” and wanted to compile some of the most informative parts of the book, as well as quotes that stood out to me. I actually cannot recommend it enough as essential reading for radfems and anyone who is gender critical. I found it very easy to read and understand, while also being evidenced based. It has expanded my understanding of how we got here. Plus it has some good reading recommendations at the end which I will be looking into. I have decided to split this up into parts (3 parts) because it will be easier to read and will give me time to work on it. (The brackets in the chapter headindings are my overview of the chapter).

Chapter 1 - The Danish Girls (Historical overview of transsexualism and transgenderism)

“In Hirschfeld’s phrase, all people were bisexual, not in the sense of being attracted to both sexes, but in the sense of being both sexes… His theory of bisexuality, which set the course for generations of later researchers and clinicians, encoded an understanding of women as naturally inferior and subordinate to men, and of the performance of sex stereotypes as part of what made someone a man or woman…”

“[Harry] Benjamin believed that sex was a spectrum and that people who wished to be members of the opposite sex might be moved along by pharmacological and surgical means. [John] Money believed that what made someone a man or woman was not their body at all, but which stereotypical sex roles they were reared in… In this way of thinking, girls and women were people who had been taught stereotypical femininity in early childhood and grown up to be decorative, domestic and subservient. Boys and men were those who had been taught stereotypical masculinity and grown up to be active, outgoing and domineering. But sometimes the socialisation may fail to take. A person might grow up highly atypical for their sex, perhaps even feeling like a member of the opposite sex and adopting that sex’s social role. In such cases, the wisest and kindest course of action would be to alter the body so that the person could be slotted back into the ‘natural order’ of things as a member of the opposite sex. Money’s contribution… the sterilisation and sex-reassignment of infants born with ambiguous genitalia…those with so-called intersex conditions.”

“As doctors, journalists and lawyers wrote and talked about [George] Jorgensen and other transsexuals, they spun into being a new way of thinking about what it means to be a woman. No longer was it possession of the type of body that can become pregnant; now it was the ability to have receptive heterosexual sex, twinned with an inner sense of being female, something like a subjective version of John Money’s gender roles.”

“A definition of biological sex as a reproductive capacity is a communal one. It is about the role that the individual plays in their species… Now the focus has narrowed. What mattered was whether an individual could provide sexual, not reproductive, services that a man expected of his wife - an individual rather than a social contract - and how she felt about herself. Thought it was not yet consistently name, ‘gender identity’ had arrived.”

Chapter 2: Sissy Boys and The Woman Inside (On dysphoria, homosexuality, and AGP - the fetish of wanting to be a woman)

“Paul Vasey[‘s]...ongoing research suggests strongly that whether highly effeminate boys grow up to identify as gay men, transwomen or something else is largely determined by culture… ‘traditional, non-Western frameworks for understanding masculine women or feminine men as “third genders” are often warped through a Western lens, which reinterprets them as transwomen or transmen. It’s a type of colonialism.’”

“...children who experienced distress with their sexed bodies often started out as merely gender-atypical, with the distress developing only as they learned that their feelings and behaviour were unacceptable to others.”

“Part of the ‘gender identity’ puzzle was now solved. Androphilic males [men attracted to other men] are often gender non-conforming in childhood, and may develop gender dysphoria and cross-sex identification as their culture is insufficiently accommodating.”

“[Ray] Blanchard… Women’s attire was not the object of such a man’s [AGP] affections, he concluded: rather, the clothes were the means whereby men gave life to that object, namely himself in the female form. Blanchard turned to Greek to name this sexual desire: ‘autogynephilia’, which means to love oneself as a woman.”

“Those who reject Blanchard’s theories…argue that the fantasies are perfectly natural because all women feel sexual about their femaleness… or alternatively, that those fantasies are mechanisms for being born in the wrong body… They [AGPs] report arousal at the simple act of putting on everyday women’s clothes. Natal women do not find getting dressed for work an orgasmic experience… Moreover, autogynephiles often eroticise aspects of womanhood that most women dislike, such as menstruation, undergoing intimate medical examinations, experiencing sexism or wearing uncomfortable clothes.”

“But the rise of left-wing identity politics and the determination to bury autogynephilia meant that, as trans people become more common and visible, this complex and nuanced picture of transness was simplified and erased.”

Chapter 3 - My Name is Neo (Using “The Matrix” as a trans analogy)

“The idea underlying all of this…dualism. This is the belief that the immaterial psyche and the vessel that houses it are separate and of different kinds… dualists conceive of a person: as a ‘ghost in the machine’. Gender identity ideology gives the ghost a sex - one that can differ from the machine. What feminists use to mean ‘gender’ was something external: a societal structure in which female people were inferior and subordinate to male ones. But within gender-identity ideology, it is an inner essence given public form by self-declaration.”

“And yet in the two-decades since the film’s [The Matrix] release, this very concept of transness has conquered medicine, law, public policy and the media. This surely could not have happened without the internet… because many people now spend more time in virtual worlds than the real one… if you spend a lot of time playing computer games, you will have become accustomed to identifying with avatars you can change on a whim.”

“This was of thinking about human existence sheds light on one of the many contradictions of gender-identity ideology. If identity is all, and a man or woman may have any type of body, then why bother with medical or surgical transition?”

“Mx Van Levy… [explains] ‘Why the term Transition is Transphobic’. The reason presented is that the word ‘transition’ is ‘based on the idea that gender looks a certain way and that people need to change from looking/sounding/acting/and more, a certain way for their identity to be respected.’... Altering the body is no part of attaining a new identity, but if the body is a mere meat puppet, why not alter it as you wish?”

“...many of those who feel driven to transition are anything but body-denialist: they are painfully aware that their bodies that their bodies cause them grief, and desperate to accommodate themselves to those bodies. They are among the people most ill-served by an ideology that pretends bodies are inconsequential and easily changed… The truth is that we are our bodies, and our bodies are our selves.”

“Within applied post-modernism, objectivity is essentially impossible. Logic and reason are not ideals to be striven for, but attempts to shore up privilege. Language is taken to shape reality, not describe it. Oppression is brought into existence by discourse. Equality is no longer achieved by replacing unjust laws and practices, but by individuals defining their own identities, and ‘troubling’ or ‘queering’ the definitions of oppressed groups.”

“Declaring pronouns can do only so much to reveal an inner self to everyone else. If you want everyone to accept gender-identity ideology, they must be persuaded that sexed bodies are not material, and that gender identities are.”

“The way they [claims] are deployed is often reminiscent of the ‘Gish gallop’ a debating technique names for creationist Duane Gish, who would fire out falsehoods, half-truths, irrelevancies and misrepresentations in quick succession to overwhelm his debating opponent. These points do not actually add up to an argument in favour of the proposition, but they waste an opponent’s time and distract them from making their own argument. The only way to counter a Gish gallop is to get your rebuttals in first.”

“...the very notion that binary sex is an artefact of Western colonialism… Never mind the racism inherent in claiming that the rest of the world needed Europeans to explain how reproduction worked; such third genders… are, rather, a testimony to the rigidity of their sex roles: a way to prevent effeminate males, same-sex attracted males from sullying the class of men.”

“ ‘Nemo’s Law’... is the gender identity equivalent of Godwin’s Law… if you mention sexual dimosphism, sooner or later someone will bring up clownfish… [they] then imply that since clownfish can change sex… there can be no objective distinction between male and female. But you need a definition of male or female to observe that clownfish can change sex… and then you will be able to see that sex in humans is indeed binary and immutable.”

“..is to claim that people with intersex conditions prove that sex is not binary… ‘Sexes’ are classes of organisms defined by the developmental pathways that evolved to produce gametes… reproductive organs may develop in anomalous ways… For there to be even three sexes, there would have to be a third gamete, and there is not.”

“...sex -not gender- is socially constructed. This is a claim of breathtaking proportions, given everything that is known about the mechanisms of reproduction and humanity’s shared evolutionary history with other sexually dimorphic species.”

“Understanding this is key to understanding the wide difference between what gender activists mean when they talk about transness, and what most ordinary people think they mean… the activists do not by any means speak for all trans people. But it is the activists’ version of the ideology that is in the ascendant, and that is being codified into laws.”

“Deconstruction is supposed to free the members of a subordinate class from subjugation within a binary… but it is freedom at a high price: denial that the subordinated class even exists in any clearly defined way… because of gender-identity ideology, the quest for liberation of people with female bodies has arrived at an extraordinary position: that they do not constitute a group that merits a name.”

Chapter 4 - Child, Interrupted (The impact of gender ideology on gender-dysphoric minors)

“The identity claims of gender-dysphoric children are taken at face value, and even the possibility of desistance is denied. Paradoxically, an ideology that holds that physiologically normal males can be every bit as much women as people born female, and vice versa, is used to justify children being put on a path to surgery and sterility.”

“...clinicians in Amsterdam decided to put puberty on pause… The idea was that any desisters would come off blockers when they realised that they no longer wanted to transition, suffer nothing worse than a slight delay to their development.”

“Of the seventy children enrolled in a study between 2000 and 2007, every single one progressed to cross-sex hormones… It beggars the belief that clinicians somehow learned to predict exactly which children would persist, exactly when they started using puberty blockers. Far more plausible is that puberty blockers, as well as blocking the physical changes that puberty brings, also blocked the developmental process whereby gender dysphoria often resolves.”

“Nobody knows how many children have received puberty blockers by now, since no one is counting.”

“And everywhere the same pattern is evident: almost every child who take puberty blockers progresses to cross-sex hormones… The notion that puberty blockers give time for dysphoria to resolve is simply untenable.”

“Both social transition and puberty blockers are presented to parents as easily reversible. But in reality, they are the early stages of what physicians call a ‘cascade of intervention’... parents who socially transition their children are fast-tracking them to medical and surgical transition, all the while believing that such decisions are many years away.”

“The lack of decent research and misrepresentation of findings mean gender affirmation cannot even be described as a risky experiment on children, since ‘experiment’ implies someone, somewhere, is tracking outcomes and comparing them with other options.”

“But a year or two is not a long follow up, and the mortality rate of over one percent for a treatment given to healthy children is sobering… But very surprisingly puberty blockers have never been put through clinical trials for use in gender medicine, they are not licensed by their manufactures for that purpose… Two studies that looked at what happened when they were used to delay puberty in animals suggested that this caused defects in spacial memory and increased behaviours thought to be analogous to depression in humans… The drugs stop calcium being laid down in bones and studies suggest a significant drop in IQ… These children may well be sacrificing their future sex life, too.”

“All in all, gender affirmation not only locks in persistence but creates trans adults who have lost fertility and sexual function, and exposed themselves to unknown health risks in return for passing better.”

“Why do parents go along with this? Many simply do not know that, without affirmation, most gender dysphoric children will desist… repeated claim that gender-dysphoric children face a choice of transition or suicide… some parents go beyond accepting their ‘trans child’ and actively encourage transition, perhaps to boost their social credentials… these parents seem to have collectively lost their minds. But they are following the approach recommended by medical experts and high-profile gender doctors… An under-acknowledged reason that some parents take the gender- affirmative approach is that they cannot bare gender non-conformity or homosexuality, and instinctively understand the link between the two.”

Chapter 5 - Miss Gendering (About teenage girls and why they are increasingly identifying out of being female.)

“Until the past decade, hardly any teenage girls sought treatment for gender dysphoria: now they predominate in clinics around the world… [with] many more girls identifying out of their sex without every coming to the attention of doctors… This story has three strands: female sexuality, modern feminism and finally, something this group is particularly prone to - social contagion.”

“Selina Todd… draws two broad points from the history of women who cross-dress, present as men or act in ‘mannish’ ways. The first is that their various motives - sexual and economic ones, as well as a desire for personal freedom - often intermingle. The second is that even a woman who has all these motives for identifying as a man may choose not to do so - is the state of feminism in her time gives her a good reason… Todd’s second illustration - of women who stay and fight for their sex - concerns a new type of ‘masculine woman’ who emerged as the Suffragettes gained momentum.”

“... I will merely observe that it is an indictment … that the first generation of girls to be taught that womanhood can be identified out of are doing so in large numbers.”

“[Lisa] Littman hypothesised that ‘social and peer contagion’ had played a role, and that adolescent cross-sex identification might sometimes be a distraction from emotional pain, like taking drugs, cutting, binging or starving.”

“...common in people with autistic traits is lack of insight in one’s feelings, in particular low self-esteem caused by perceived rejection of peers. Such children may latch onto a concrete explanation for their misery: that they were ‘born in the wrong body’.”

“‘It’s like if you took girls with eating disorders and gave them a belief system that validated their body hatred,’ says [Sasha] Ayad. ‘I’m not dealing with a child and their dysphoria; I’m dealing with a child, their dysphoria and their religion.’”

“Judging by the historical record, when a psychic epidemic hits, doctors often feel moved to centre interventions on the female reproductive system… When [Lisa] Machiano realised that the girls who said they felt like boys were being given drugs and surgeries that would leave them sterile, at first she thought there must be a misunderstanding. ‘And then I thought: n, Lisa, this happens all the time, and it’s happening again.’”

#radfem #radfems do touch #radfems do interact #radfems please interact #radfem safe #radical feminists please interact #radical feminism #gender critical #gender criticism #trans helene joyce #reading #reference #quotes #more to come

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crossdreamers · 3 years

Text

The interaction between doctors and trans people explored in new article on the medicalization of transgender lives

"The argument has been that scientific and medical developments in the 20th century made 'sex-reassignment' surgery possible, which helped the patients. What I see instead is that people seeking medical help were part of a relationship with surgeons and physicians, and each group benefited from it," says Marta Vicente, a professor of history and of women, gender & sexuality studies at the University of Kansas.

In the article "The Medicalization of the Transsexual: Patient-Physician Narratives in the First Half of the Twentieth Century" she explores the history of the medicalization of the way culture approach trans people.

And she is at least partly right. Doctors like Magnus Hirschfeld and Walter Benjamin did listen to what trans people had to say about themselves, their identities and their life experiences. The narrative about what being “transsexual” was was not the creation of the medical society alone.

Phys.org writes:

The media helped make celebrities out of several individuals during this formative medical era. The first was Lili Elbe [photo below], whose story provided the basis for the Oscar-winning 2015 biopic "The Danish Girl."

"I didn't care for that movie," Vicente said. "But it's based on a novel inspired by the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerde Wegener, and I was totally taken by the facts of the story. It's very tragic. She died shortly after her last surgery (in 1931). While she was having the surgery, it was on the front page of American newspapers—like the Omaha World-Herald. Everyone knew about Lili."

Even better known was the account of Christine Jorgensen [photo above], an American Army veteran seeking a sex change who became an international celebrity in the 1950s.

Both Elbe and Jorgensen helped shape the ideas of the time, for good and – I guess – for bad. The main problem was that this narrative made “transsexuality” sound like a mental illness, even if this was not necessarily the objective of the doctors and their trans patients.

Photo of Lili Elbe (1926).

Here’s an abstract if the article:

By mid-century, a growing number of individuals in both Europe and America were approaching physicians such as Benjamin searching for answers and means to change their bodies to match their gender. This phenomenon had started in Europe in the 1930s, when the Danish painter Einar Wegener underwent a series of operations that transformed a body defined at birth as male into the female body of Lili Elbe. The news of Elbe's transformation ignited interest and discussion among physicians as well as the public on the capacity science had to alter bodies to fit their intended selves. The case of Elbe combines the three main aspects studied in this article-the medicalization of the homosexual, the birth of the transsexual, and the physician-patient relationship in transsexual narratives. The study of physician and patient narratives allow us to see how the transsexual phenomenon was in fact created out of the intersection of interests from both physicians and their transsexual patients.

Marta V. Vicente uses the term “transsexual” instead of “transgender”, because this is the story about the way people saw this phenomenon in parts of the previous century, and that term had other connotations then than the term “transgender” has today.

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbt+#transsexual #queer #medicine

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transparenttriumphzombie · 3 years

Photo

Phoebe Smith (1939–) (Phoebe transitioned in Atlanta in the 1960s. In those days she had great difficulty in finding out about other transsexuals, and in finding any professionals who even knew where to point her, let alone to actually help. If she were in New York or Paris, she would have had more information even in the 1960s – but she did not know that. Fortunately she was determined.)

James Smith was born to a family of sharecroppers in Irwin County, US Georgia. His relatives referred to him as a ‘sissy’ from an early age, and he was bullied at school, more so because of his disinterest in sports.

In September 1953, the family pickup was hit by a flatbed truck. The father had his left arm crushed and had to give up farming; the mother was in constant pain afterwards. They moved to Atlanta. At the new school Smith was called ‘queer’.

In 1955 a neighbor showed him a magazine article about someone who had a sex-change operation, and asked him why he did not have it also. Smith wrote to a preacher on the radio that he had been listening to, and later phoned him. This was the first time that he ever told someone that he wanted to change sex. The preacher said that he saw nothing wrong or sinful in Smith’s desire, but couldn’t offer any help. In September 1956 Smith attempted suicide by taking his mother’s pain pills. After recovery he insisted on quitting school – he was then seventeen.

After temporary and part-time work, Smith found a position at Rich’s Department Store where he stayed for ten years. Every now and then there would be an article in the news about a transsexual, but when Smith attempted to correspond with a doctor or psychiatrist, he was told that a change of sex was impossible.

In November 1961 Smith was called to report to the Draft Board. He explained himself and was classified 4-F. If questioned he said that this was because of a bad back resulting from the 1953 road crash. Around this time, his father driving a cement mixer was hit by a train on a crossing. Smith’s younger brother joined the US Marines, but was discharged after being diagnosed with chronic bronchitis.

By 1964 Smith had rented a mailbox and was writing letters prolifically: to doctors, to medical universities, to politicians. Many were not answered; some were rudely answered. One, who was helpful, was Amy Larkin, the agony aunt at the Atlanta Constitution (actually a pseudonym for Olive Ann Burns (1924 – 1990) who later became renowned for her novel Cold Sassy Tree). Larkin passed anonymous information about Smith to Harry Benjamin in New York (who was then working with John Money so that the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic would open the next year). Benjamin wrote back that “there seems very little doubt that this patient is a transsexual”.

Larkin arranged an appointment with a local endocrinologist, but he, despite the letter from Benjamin, maintained that what was wanted could not be done.

Smith wrote to the Governor of Georgia who passed the letter to the Dean of the Medical College of Georgia who replied that the surgery was illegal within Georgia.

Smith contacted Atlanta Constitution journalist, Dick Herbert, who became interested and wrote a sympathetic story (by the standards of the time) using a pseudonym: “Long-Ill Tim Gets New Hope to Solve Endocrine Malady”.

Smith applied to Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation and Georgia Mental Health Institute. They responded with a mixture of ignoring him, giving a run-around and even rudeness. In 1968 Smith saw Christine Jorgensen on the Merv Griffin television show, and wrote to ask for Christine’s address. Christine put Smith in touch with a doctor, who in turn gave the names and addresses of two surgeons: Dr Burou in Casablanca and Dr Barbosa in Tijuana. Smith decided on the latter.

In January 1969, Smith moved out of the family home to stay with a friend; resigned his job; sent a letter to his parents saying for the first time that he was transsexual and asking them to borrow $4,200 against their house to lend to him. Smith paid $200 for a flight to Los Angeles, and then took a train to San Diego, crossed the border into Mexico at 2am. After resting in a hotel, Smith arrived at Dr Barbosa’s office – still in male clothes.

Dr Barbosa examined Smith and then explained that he required a full year of hormone therapy prior to surgery. Further examination discovered a thyroid problem. Dr Barbosa compromised and treatment for the thyroid condition was provided as well as an orchiectomy. While in the clinic, Smith contemplated a female name and decided on Phoebe.

She had brought a mail-order catalogue with her and made her first purchases of female clothing. On return to Atlanta, Phoebe was welcomed by her family and relatives. The mail-order purchases had arrived, and from that day on, she never wore male clothing again.

Back in Atlanta early 1969 after a first visit to Dr Barbosa, Phoebe Smith was taken shopping by an aunt who bought her three dresses. Phoebe made an appointment with Harry Benjamin in New York for a hormone prescription. Two aunts and a cousin went to New York with her.

Phoebe attempted to return to work at Rich’s Department Store, but a few co-workers objected, and the supervisor said no. Phoebe appealed up two levels but without success.

A gay former co-worker gave a big party to introduce Phoebe to the local gay scene – but she did not feel that she belonged there. She was interviewed for a local television news program.

In November Phoebe returned to New York to see Harry Benjamin, and was told that she was ready for the final surgery. She immediately wrote to Dr Barbosa, but he did not reply – and then by telegram – until March 31 giving an appointment for April 11. She was in the hospital for two weeks, and even when she left was in considerable pain.

At first she wanted to be open about her past when applying for jobs, but quickly found that that was not going to work. She took the Georgia State Merit test, and got a position in Disease investigation. In May 1971 she transferred to Medicaid.

She was now undergoing electrolysis, and for a short while worked with a local transsexual support group before it discontinued.

Phoebe several times met persons who knew someone who knew her previous self, but it did not become a problem. One man threatened to out her if she did not date him. In spring 1974 a trans woman whom Phoebe had spoken to with the support group applied to Medicaid in the hope of having her surgery paid for. They met at the elevator, and the woman introduced herself. This made Phoebe think that everyone was talking about her. A close work friend told her that “we all know and we still love you”.

In 1975 Phoebe transferred to Family and Children Services. One day a co-worker rushed in and exclaimed: “Y’all, there is a transsexual that works for the State!”. Again it turned out that most of the co-workers already knew, and never said.

By June 1979 Phoebe had written her first autobiography, Phoebe. She self-published it and advertised in trans newsletters. A thousand copies were printed, and a New York bookstore bought four hundred. Reactions at work were mixed. People she had not previously known became friendly; no man at work ever asked her out again.

In 1980 she put together a brochure, “The Journey from One to Forty was Difficult but Successful”. It included a photograph of herself at age one with father, and a photo at age 40. It criticized the report from Jon Meyers of John Hopkins of the previous year that had been used as an excuse to close its Gender Identity Clinic. “I have worked for the State of Georgia for almost ten years. During my fourth year of employment, knowledge of my surgery became widespread. It was upsetting, but also a big relief to get it in the open.” Later that year a new communications office was established, and Phoebe became its supervisor, but with a pay cut.

The sale of the autobiography resulted in mail, much of it from persons seeking information. This led to the idea of a newsletter, The Transsexual Voice. The first two issues were complimentary, and 30 copies were printed. Within a few months there were over 100 subscribers.

A subscriber contacted her wanting to find someone to train in electrolysis. Phoebe jumped at the chance and for the next 15 years they worked on each other.

By the mid-1980s there were over 300 subscribers including Leo Wollman, Rupert Raj and Michelle Hunt. Phoebe mailed packets of transsexual-related material to newspaper editors, television news programs, talk show hosts etc. Very few responded.

Through the 1980s Phoebe’s family health problems deteriorated. Her younger brother was diagnosed with cancer, and died at age 40. Her father died age 74 in 1989 after various health problems. Her mother needed daily care such that Phoebe had to discontinue The Transsexual Voice in 1995. Her mother died in 1998, when Phoebe was 59.

She retired in in 2000. She had worked for the State of Georgia for almost 30 years.

#transgender #post-op transgender woman #transwoman #transgender woman

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cactusradical · 2 years

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on the pseudoscientific origins of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health:

"Harry Benjamin, a German endocrinologist who had invited Hirschfeld [Lili Elbe's doctor] for a speaking tour of the US shortly before Lili Elbe’s death, had started his career as an out-and-out quack. He arrived in New York in 1913 as the assistant of a swindler selling the ‘turtle treatment’, a fake tuberculosis vaccine. That fraud was exposed, and Benjamin moved on to touting testosterone supplements and vasectomy as anti-ageing treatments. (Neither worked – though he tried both on himself, and was quite an advertisement for his wares, living to 101.)

After meeting Jorgensen [a trans woman] at a dinner party in 1953, Benjamin became her endocrinologist. He had already been preaching Hirschfeldian notions for some years; now her fame amplified his voice. At a 1954 symposium sponsored by the American Journal of Psychotherapy, he argued that everyone was made up of a ‘mixture of male and female components’, and that male ‘transsexualists’ had a ‘constitutional femininity, perhaps due to a chromosomal sex disturbance’. Like Hirschfeld, he thought it reasonable to treat them with hormones and surgery, though for quite some time he could not find a surgeon to co-operate. Most other doctors thought such people were mad – and treated them with the usual barbarism of the day, including mega-doses of their own sex’s hormones and electric shocks.

In 1963 Benjamin took on another patient who expressed a cross-sex identification, and who was to play as big a part in his career as Jorgensen, although behind the scenes. Reed (Rita) Erickson, a transsexual man who had been born a girl in 1917, was heir to a fortune, and funded a series of research symposia run by Benjamin. A decade later these became a standing body, the Harry Benjamin Foundation, which in 2006 was renamed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). It is still the world’s most influential organisation in the field."

Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

#gender critical #radfem #terf

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lewis-winters · 3 years

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Slightly genderfluid harry??? 👀 👀

Listen HAHAHAH sometimes, a little man wants to wear a dress and be a pretty girl, ok. Sometimes Harry just wants to be as pretty as his very bisexual wife, Kitty. Wear her heels and just in general maybe be called Harriet for a laugh, but it also isn't a laugh, they might like it a bit too much. Sometimes Harry just wants to be a genderless blob and takes a lot of satisfaction in being hard to pin down. "What are you?" people ask, to which they reply; "I'm an enigma."

You know, the usual.

Ok serious answer under the cut HAHAHA

My OC, Natalie Morse and @hellofanidea's OC Arthur Benjamin Foster are a trans woman and a trans man respectively and the subject of dresses and clothes comes up a lot in regards to these two because this was before the idea of a surgical sex change was as wide spread (see: Christine Jorgensen) and accessible, thus the way our characters combat gender dysphoria is through clothes.

Natalie, in particular, is very close to Dick, Nix, Harry and by extension, Kitty. She visits them a lot. When she stays with Kitty and Harry, she and Kitty share clothes. Sometimes, because they are attached to the hip as well as the soul, Arthur's with Nat on these visits.

And idk, being in the presence of two people who regularly commit gender fuck crimes and a wife who is more than willing to help them all commit gender fuck crimes just does things to you. Add Winnix to that (because I am incapable of making any fic where Winnix isn't a thing), and you have a major upending of not just gender roles, but gender presentation and gender itself as a concept.

Ya know how, when you start hanging with trans and NB friends, you start questioning your own gender and stuff? We like to joke; "Lmao, we're transing your gender it's contagious!" but really, sometimes thoughts on gender as depicted by society are so pervasive you realize... "huh, I present like a man but I don't think I want to all time. Some days, I like to be a girl." or "you know, I never realized this, but I never describe myself in terms of 'man' or 'woman', just. Person. I think I should unpack that."

I already am tackling this with Natalie, whose being part of the military means being misgendered and invalidated constantly but whose awareness of her own identity is so strong she can see herself as nothing but a woman. Now I kinda wanted to see how that might work for somebody like Harry, who is gender fluid and is free to explore that part of himself in society outside of the military, but a society that is much stricter and much less knowledgeable about the gender spectrum as ours is today. Ya know?

I also have an intersex character, but she's more of a secondary character than Natalie is, so idk if she'll get to meet Harry. But if she were, their conversations would be very, very interesting.

#ask #harry welsh #natalie morse #*squints* nathan is this you HAHAHA i like to think im better at spotting you now but I'm still never sure #ab foster

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purpleradfeminista · 3 years

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"Why is this kind of treatment never even CONSIDERED for a trans person?" cause dysphoria sufferers are considered non-responsive to talk therapy unlike BDD/anorexic patients who can enter remission. Maybe if you actually stepped out of the radfem bubble where y'all theorize out of your butts and did actual reading about older writings on transition you would know, duh. Read about John Money, Harry Benjamin, Magnus Hirshfield, Havelock Ellis, Virginia Prince, Lou Sullivan. If you truly care ofc

Ok sure I'll bite.

John Money: was a New Zealand psychologist, sexologist and author known for his research into sexual identity and biology of gender and his conduct towards vulnerable patients. [bolding mine] He was one of the first researchers to publish theories on the influence of societal constructs of gender on individual formation of gender identity. Money introduced the terms gender identity, gender role and sexual orientation and popularised the term paraphilia. He spent a considerable amount of his career in the USA.

Recent academic studies have criticized Money's work in many respects, particularly in regard to his involvement with the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer, his forcing this child and his brother to simulate sex acts which Money photographed and the adult suicides of both brothers.

--I haven't read any of Money's work directly, but I have read the book that is about his patient victim David Reimer, who was surgically "turned into a girl" shortly after birth and used by Money to try and justify his opinions about gender reassignment. Reimer reports that "when living as Brenda, [he] did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"), and neither frilly dresses nor female hormones made him feel female."

Harry Benjamin: seems to at least not have been a pedophile, and I suppose is best known for his treatment of Christine Jorgensen, but I find it significant that he only stepped in to help patients after other therapies had failed.

Magnus Hirshfield: I'm sort of puzzled as to why he's on your list, as his major body of work is about sex, and gay sex in particular, and his only contribution to what you're talking about appears to be some vague writing he did about "transvestitism".

Havelock Ellis: worth first noting that he was a eugenicist....but aside from that he appears to have been the first, or one of the first, to acknowledge that autogynephilia exists and is often a factor in the male desire to "transition".

"Aware of Hirschfeld's studies of transvestism, but disagreeing with his terminology, in 1913 Ellis proposed the term sexo-aesthetic inversion to describe the phenomenon. In 1920 he coined the term eonism, which he derived from the name of a historical figure, Chevalier d'Eon. Ellis explained:

On the psychic side, as I view it, the Eonist is embodying, in an extreme degree, the aesthetic attitude of imitation of, and identification with, the admired object. It is normal for a man to identify himself with the woman he loves. The Eonist carries that identification too far, stimulated by a sensitive and feminine element in himself which is associated with a rather defective virile sexuality on what may be a neurotic basis.

Ellis found eonism to be "a remarkably common anomaly", and "next in frequency to homosexuality among sexual deviations", and categorized it as "among the transitional or intermediate forms of sexuality". As in the Freudian tradition, Ellis postulated that a "too close attachment to the mother" may encourage eonism, but also considered that it "probably invokes some defective endocrine balance"."

Virginia Prince: I am honestly surprised that current TRAs even want to claim this person, as she seems to be like....completely saying the opposite of everything that TRAs claim to believe about their "gender identity".

"Prince helped popularize the term 'transgender', and erroneously asserted that she coined transgenderist and transgenderism, words which she meant to be understood as describing people who live as full-time women, but have no intention of having genital surgery. (bolding mine) Prince also consistently argued that transvestism is very firmly related to gender, as opposed to sex or sexuality.Her use of the term "femmiphile" related to the belief that the term "transvestite" had been corrupted, intending to underline the distinction between heterosexual crossdressers, who act because of their love of the feminine, and the homosexuals or transsexuals who may cross-dress. Although Prince identified with the concept of androgyny (stating in her autobiographical 100th issue that she could "…do [her] own thing whichever it is…"), she preferred to identify as Gynandrous. This, she explained, is because although 'Charles' still resides within her, "…the feminine is more important than the masculine." Prince's idea of a "true transvestite" was clearly distinguished from both the homosexual and the transsexual, claiming that true transvestites are "exclusively heterosexual... The transvestite values his male organs, enjoys using them and does not desire them removed." (bolding mine)

By the early 1970s, Prince and her approaches to crossdressing and transvestism were starting to gain criticism from transvestites and transsexuals, as well as sections of the gay and women's movements of the time. Controversy and criticism has arisen based on Prince's support for conventional societal norms such as marriage and the traditional family model, as well as the portrayal of traditional gender stereotypes. Her attempts to exclude transsexuals, homosexuals or fetishists from her normalization efforts of the practice of transvestism have also drawn much criticism.

Lou Sullivan: was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay, and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated concepts.

Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. (bolding mine) He founded FTM International, one of the first organizations specifically for FTM individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.

From what I've read I don't know, it kind of sounds like Lou might have agreed with me that counselling should be a first step before handing out hormones like M&Ms. But unfortunately I can't ask him since he had the misfortune to decide to live as a gay man at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

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Ok I spent some time researching all those folks you mentioned. None of them seem to say, or have the opinion, that counselling is useless for people with gender dysphoria. So my question remains......why is it not considered as an option? You are telling me that it "doesn't work", but not one piece of the "research" you told me to do bears that out, and there is actually quite a LOT of research showing the reverse, that many folks who identify as transgender, especially young children, will eventually desist if supported with counselling but not given a social or physical transition. So. My question is still hanging out there. Thanks for providing me some interesting reading, however!

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