Transsexual gamers fight for their rights

This would be one article that might benefit from his nonsensical ramblings!

At what point does it matter? It seems like people have to classify themselves to be some sort of group. Its just plain silliness if you ask me.

What is it with certian groups of people who have to make it a point now to stand out at the expense of the rest of us. Makes me think of the sicko gay pride parades and freaks in leather.

Ive heard about some gaming girls group in Kentuck called "Colleagues Haressing Interactive Content in Kentuck State".

CHICKS for short.

Peaces.

Unlike in Ian M. Bank's Culture novels or in Varley's "Steel Beach", there is no true sex change operation. It's all psychobabble enhanced by physical mutilation that's as harmful as what they do to girls in some African cultures.

Girl (and women) gamers deserve their own space and subculture and men pretending to be women should be kept out of it. Though this isn't tennis, the issues are the same. Women approach games differently than men. Gays and transexuals should have their own category at this event.

My wife's an avid role gamer on both consoles and PC's and her gaming style has always been a bit different then mine. When she's not in a fellowship with me,she prefers playing with female characters who are actually women in real life (she says she can tell the difference in play styles)

Girls, Trannys whatever should go back on their Wii or DS.

They shouldn't be allowed to game on PC anyway. Most off them play like crap lol

Btw..Sylvie looks like a vampire in that pic. Yikes! Run for Cover! No wait Run for the Sun! lol

...will you marry me?

I'd kill hordes of zombies with my bare hands for that devilish smile of yours ;-)

I know it's fashionable for the arrogant and ignorant to pontificate about things they know nothing about, but it's useful to rebut them with facts when they make more outrageously incorrect claims than usual.

Like the claims about transsexuals.

Some facts:

The American Psychiatric Association is conducting a seminar at its annual meeting soon:
"S10. The Neurobiological Evidence for Transgenderism

1. Brain Gender Identity Sidney W. Ecker, M.D.
2. Transsexuality as an Intersex Condition Milton Diamond, Ph.D."

From
fMRT zur Diagnose bei Transsexualität geprüft Ärzte Zeitung, 30.05.2006 (translation)
"In men, the limbic system and upper regions of the hypothalamus, the amygdalae and the insular cortex were activated substantially more strongly. "We confirmed this finding in the comparison between the heterosexual men and women of our Cohort", said Gizewski.

This specifically male activation of the limbic system was not found in the transsexual sample. Under fMRT, the pictures corresponded rather accurately to those of the female sample.

Radiologists can now confirm what transsexuals report - that they feel "trapped in the wrong body" - on the basis of the activation of the brain when presented with erotic stimuli. There is obviously a biological correlation with the subjective feelings."

Some more papers on the subject:
Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids. by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908;
Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041
Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation. Swaab Gynecol Endocrinol (2004) 19:301–312.
A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.
A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity. by Garcia-Falgueras et al Brain. 2008 Dec;131(Pt 12):3132-46.

Summary: (Mostly)Male brain in (Mostly)Female body, or the reverse. There's degrees, and other parts of the body may be cross-gendered too. It's a form of Intersex, a body neither 100% male nor 100% female.

It's correct to say that no-one can "change sex" - but what they can do is to align the body and brain so they're consistent.

Sylvie is hottt!!!

Sylvie is a transsexual? =|

First, to open it up, I am a transsexual woman and a gamer, and honestly, I've been calling myself a "girl gamer" for years.

Also, to clarify the situation (and so nobody tries playing these cards later), I was never abused, molested, or even raised in a liberal environment. My family would not let me play with dolls or anything overly feminine. I had never even met a transsexual (at least that I was aware of) until I hit 23. I always felt like I should have been born female. This wasn't a wake up one day and go "Hey! I wanna be a girl!" This was a serious decision. And before you even think of going there, I'm not doing this for a guy. I'm not into men, and I'm definitely not doing it to "diddle myself".

Now, on with the show.

To yipsl: Where are you getting your "facts"? It's true that there is not a surgery to change a person's sex 100% yet, but keep in mind, with the way science is moving, how much longer will it be. The actual operation is not genital mutilation, it is the reconstruction of the genitals to form a labia, vagina, and clitoris. With some of the newer processes, you can't even tell the difference at glance. The only operation that I can even think of that comes close to the process done on the African women is an old process that is not widely used anymore, and it just resulted in the lack of ability to orgasm through sex. Now, there are many processes that do work and will allow you to orgasm through intercourse.

As to the claim in your title that "Transexuals aren't girls period", I can definitively tell you flat out, that you are more wrong than you can ever know. What you are attempting to define a woman as is her ability to reproduce which is a typical male heterosexual way of objectifying women. I'd like to point out that a fairly decent sized part of the female population cannot have children (hysterectomies, menopause, etc...). Now, this is the part where you claim it comes down to chromosomes which is, in fact, very insulting. Not particularly to me, but rather to the 2% of the nation that is born intersexed or with ambiguous genitalia. You see there are women out there with XY and there are men with XX. There are also people with XXX, XXY, XXXY, XYY, XYYY, XYYYY, and XO to list some. And then there are the intersexed conditions that can make someone genetically male appear female like Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome (PMDS) or Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) to list a few. All this, and we haven't even gotten into the birth defects where the doctors decide whether a child should be a "boy" or a "girl".

Now, as to how we approach games, have you ever played a game with a transsexual before? Or several? If you had, then you'd know that transsexuals like women and men each have their own gaming styles. I'm betting your wife knows of female gamers she can't stand, but she enjoys gaming in that group of her female friends (which may have a trans woman in it for all you or she knows) because they like to game like her. I do some tabletop gaming as well, and I need a plot and character development to my adventure, or it seems pointless. However, I've played some people (a good portion of them natal born women) who were all about the hack and slash and just wanted to kill stuff. I'm betting that is the distinction you are trying to make here, "Guys game by killing stuff. Girls are more about the quest and socializing".

Now, moving on to Jay: Really?!? You're really going to say that? It's not even a debate point. It's just trash talking to do nothing but make yourself feel better, so I'm going to skip it.

To Zoe Brain: Thanks for the defense of the trans. :) I would however, like to point out one issue with one of the subjects you brought up. You used this statement from one of the research papers:

"Radiologists can now confirm what transsexuals report - that they feel "trapped in the wrong body" - on the basis of the activation of the brain when presented with erotic stimuli. There is obviously a biological correlation with the subjective feelings."

While it does push forward the point, it has a small gaff. It uses the word erotic.Now, this is not wrong in and of itself, however, transsexuals are already hyper sexualized, so it makes you wonder why they chose to concentrate on erotic stimuli. I believe this just another form of effemimania. For those who don't know what effemimania is, it's a term coined by noted trans activist Julia Serano. She defines effemimania as the following:

"An obsession with male or trans expressions of femininity. I coined this term to describe how psychologists and sexologists have painstakingly categorized, described, researched and hypothesized about the etiology of male/trans femininity (while showing little to no interest in female/trans masculinity), but it could also be used to describe how our culture deems MTF-spectrum transgenderism more “fascinating” than FTM-spectrum transgenderism."

So, I appreciate the backing (and I hope from more in the future), but in the future, let's try to avoid the whole effemimania thing.

Now, to expand on Zoe Brain's great idea, here are a few more resources which should help get it across that trans women are women and should therefore be called "girl gamers".

There was the study just recently released which shows that Male to Female transsexuals have a longer androgen receptor gene than your typical male. The extension of this gene blocks the receiving of testosterone to the brain which would cause the brain to develop as female from inside the womb. A news article and abstract of the study findings about this are posted below.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/27/2401941.htm

http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/bps/article/PIIS0006322308010871/abstract

If you want read the entire study about the neurons in trans people brains compared to the natal born individuals, the study is below.

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034

I hope this has been informative. :)

Let me ask this question of the general populace, if you woke up one day in a body of the opposite sex, what would you do? Don't just spout out an answer like, "Diddle myself". Seriously think about it.

The German fMRI study initially used erotic visual stimulation as it's a very easy way of showing obvious differences between male and female neuroanatomy. Sexual orientation does have an effect, but not in the areas of the brain being studied.

In later work, they used visio-spatial relationship perception and other, less well-known and more difficult to measure differentiators, all with the same result. But this was the first article on the subject, and not many of the others are available online like this one is. Not without paying a subscription to a medical journal, anyway.

It's unfortunate that this can easily be misinterpreted to confuse sex and gender, but we have to go with what the experimental setup was, not what we think it should have been.

It's not as if we don't have plenty of evidence in other areas though, such as sense of smell, number of cells of different types in each structure etc.

Only on the Internet where men are men and women are men and 13yr. old girls are FBI agents !

All the "scientific" studies carried out to try to get to the bottom of "transsexualism" is flawed and not conclusive. I don't have time to refutre all the studies but let's just pick the last one mentioned:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/27/2401941.htm
"Study leader, head of molecular genetics at Prince Henry's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Associate Professor Vincent Harley, speculates, based on cell studies, that this genetic variation might reduce testosterone action and "under-masculinise" or feminise the brain during foetal development."
Note the use of the word MIGHT. To this day no one has provided a definitive proof that transsexualism is anything more than a mental condition. Think about it: a perfectly normally formed male decides he'd rather be a girl. Research should be done into how to get rid of this embarrassing condition instead of trying to embrace it. Chopping off your dick makes you sick not a woman.