Thursday, April 30, 2009

jumping dresses over hot heads

come to think of it, we came from the same school of thought, social sciences. you are in psychology, while i am in social anthropology.

source


although we (should) know, how "glamorous and empowering" these fields are, considering we are able to explain and observe human behaviors and interactions, we are still bound to its flaws and shortcomings. thus, we should not put ourselves above the rest. for regardless how predictable and general human behaviors can be, we still cannot limit them on certain categories and underestimate how human mind works.


no wonder we don't have laws and just rely on theories, and these theories are never constant either. they evolve, give birth to another and will never stop until they become a law--- until absolute truth is reach (which i believe is still a long way to go).


for you, crossdressing and transgender are abnormalities. while for me, it is a matter of preferrence. basically, what i am just driving at is the moment you tag them as abnormalities or disorders, you are already implying that they are atleast a disease, contagious or genetics and curable or controlable.


but, in my perspective, it is a preference. cross-dressers and transgenders are like that because they chose to be one, reared by their personal and social environments and not by certain gay genes or hormones.
although, most would argue that hormonal stimuli are still factors to be considered, it could still not be denied that such identity is brought about more by their own personal decision.


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then, you raised that it is scientific, that through psychiatry and its empirical means, psychology or atleast you have established that such cases are indeed abnormalities and disorders.

but history have already decided this, through the 1973 convention by the American Psychiatric Association, where they have already removed homosexuality as a mental disorder
and not universally viewed as a pathology.

if these are still not enough, then lets just simplify things for the benefit of you and to those who are not in related to our field. perhaps, you are starting to tag me as know-it-all again.

but you have said it yourself, whenever you attend mass. it annoys you how much the church could be judgmental and discriminatory to homosexuals. but how is this different from your standpoint?

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following the analogy, if church views it as evil, while psychology deemed it as an abnormality, would it also be the same if we say that while bible condemned it as a sin, psychology books identify it as a disorder?
i (will) never impose my standpoint into to you or anyone vis-a-vis the discpline i belong, and neither tell you that you should drop yours to give way to mine. for me, this was suppose to be a healthy arguement regarding interdisciplinary views to homosexuality, but the moment, you called me, "makitid ang utak," that was beyond my patience to endure.

i tried being as objective as i can be, like most of the arguement i had been. but you were the one who pushed me to my subjectivities. i am sorry, if i called you names. i am sorry, if i wasn't able to meet your expectations. and i am sorry, if i can't change myself and my opinions just for you.
let's just drop this off.







* ewik in his pa-intellectual tampuhan blues.
** no, this doesn't happen often. i can still make tampo because of lovelife, sexlife or even with the kikay earings that you are wearing-- and see i can also be konyo! (probably, joaqui is now laughing and enjoying this!)
*** and above all, no i am not a crossdresser or transgender, not because i find something wrong about it. or do you also want to have a piece of my pa-intellectual tampuhan blues?
**** this isn't funny, dabo, don't laugh?! hahaha.

12 comments:

LoF said...

i'm glad my committee is not letting the boundaries of my discipline interfere with the direction my unconscious is taking my dissertation. refreshing change from my day job. if only i can get it finished.

wanderingcommuter said...

professor ba kita noong collge, line of flight. hahaha!

parteeboi said...

i envy you that you can write something like this. i should try write my views on these issues.

lucas said...

i remembered one episode on the tyra show. kahit pala sa mga gay communities may discrimination din. a masculine gay guy is against the drag queen who crossdress...

siguro nga it boils down to the how people perceive things as 'normal'...

Anonymous said...

Gender identity disorder (GID) is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe persons who experience significant gender dysphoria (discontent with the biological sex they were born with). It is a psychiatric classification and describes the attributes related to transsexuality, transgender identity, and transvestism. It is the diagnostic classification most commonly applied to transsexuals.

Homosexuality is not a disorder. GID is.

FYI, psychologists save people with GID by preventing them from committing suicide due to depression brought by GID. They help them by resolving GID not homosexuality.

LoF said...

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her chapter in Fear of Queer Planet (1994) has shown how GID came to replace homosexuality as a psychological disorder classification in the profession and how it has been applied to people at a younger and younger age as a sort of proto-homosexuality (disorder) since homosexuality is no longer a classified disorder.

Psychologists only think they are "saving" people because of their own neurotic narcissistic complexes. Psychologists who actually help people do not suffer from wounder-healer/messiah complexes that would characterize the analyst-analysand relationship as one of "saving."

In my ignorant opinion, reducing behavior to these kinds of broad useless classifications does more harm to the psyche of the individual than good and only helps to inflate the messiah complex driving the psychologist on a rescue mission to save transgenders from themselves.

citybuoy said...

very well said.. i share your opinion that it's a preference. while i believe that a person is gay NOT by preference, it is that person's choice to cross-dress or get certain parts changed. very well said.

Anonymous said...

Psychologists do not save just for the heck of being a messiah. After all, they have clients not patients. And the two are very different from each other.

Anonymous said...

So what do you say to a person who comes to you as a professional and says, "I believe I'm in the wrong body. And I'm really upset and disturbed about it" You just shrug it off and say, it's perfectly normal? Just because these classifications are useless? And you can't help them as a mental health professional?

Then you wait until he comes back as a cadaver? Which has happened countless times?

These broad useless classifications are not put in place to discriminate nor harm people. They are there so that people are guided. Although there are criteria for be followed and they are not used loosely just by looking at their clothing.

wanderingcommuter said...

levitico 18:22; 1 corinto 6:9; roma 1:26-27
ayon sa salita ng diyos, ang sinumang patuloy na nakikisama sa hindi niya tunay na asawa, sa kapwa lalaki o maging sa kapwa babae ay siguradong mapapasaapoy sng impyerno.


if psychologist/psychiatrist won't work then probably we could bring them to this people, who are diseminnating this: http://wanderingcommuter.blogspot.com/2009/04/holy-week-presentation.html


since, i am starting to believe that there is indeed no difference between them.


*wink*

Anonymous said...

Well, if other people can do better, Then answer first what your going to tell to those who are severely disturbed about being not in their own body. And they want to kill themselves because of depression.

LoF said...

bino/gino: i think you've summarized the problem I have illustrated here. the psyche does not lend itself to quick answers. each individual has his own history as to why he may feel he is in the wrong body.

most conflicts in most people involve a conflict between their idealized self and their actual self (Horney) or over-identification with the persona (Jung), whichever theoretical school you'd like to go down. For some people, that gets played out through gender. But each case is unique and it requires really listening to the analysand and allowing him to make a relationship with his unconscious. Its difficult to aggregate all MTF transgenders into one psychological box as the reasons may be wholly different and unrelated that just appear as the same behavior -- which is why focusing on behavior is useless and, in my opinion, does more harm than good for a psyche.