> Inna’s mother was able to call an ambulance in time to save Inna, but was afraid that, if there were a next time, she might not be so lucky. “I can come to terms with my daughter becoming my son,” she said. “But I will never get over it if I were to lose my child.”
Or love. Plenty of parents nowadays would rather disown their child than accept they are a different sex, political ideology, or religion than their parents raised them as.
Both things can be true. There are still plenty of modern parents who would rather disown their child than accept they are a different sex, but there are also more modern parents who are more accepting of those differences compared to 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
In the UK at least there has been a major rise in transphobia recently. Compared to a few years ago, it's become a lot more prevalent in media and more common/acceptable to the general public.
This is a really interesting article about the first female-to-male transition surgery. One element I find really interesting is how the doctors justified performing the surgery. Their viewpoints are clearly misogynistic and products of their time, and yet the care the patient received was progressive. There's a disconnect here that I find deeply fascinating.
Thanks for sharing! This is really interesting. A lot of early trans medicine was based around homophobia (i.e. they would have rather helped someone transition into a woman than allow them to be a gay man) and it is so fascinating to read about. Most of the old scales/surveys (e.g. Harry Benjamin’s Sex Orientation Scale) that they used to diagnose and categorize trans people scored straight trans people as the most “true” type of trans and others as having less conviction in their transness.
This is how I believe a few Muslim countries operate. They don't believe in gay people but if you become a man or woman, whatever is opposite and fully transition then in the eyes of God its okay. Humans are strange
There's a major dark side to this, where sometimes cis gay people are pressured to transition (including medically) to get on the right side of this legal framework.
It also highlights just what an undertaking transitioning is, because if it were easy we would see more gay cis people transition for legal reasons/safety but it doesn't happen. They'd rather risk prison or death than transition. Which goes to show that it is never a trivial thing, like someone just decides to trans themselves one day.
I don't think it's transitioning being difficult that's the major reason, it's that subconscious sex is innate and someone who's cis and doesn't experience dysphoria pre-transition isn't going to be able to handle having major dysphoria from transitioning for the rest of their life.
Ya thats my point. Politicians there days want ppl to believe that everyone is just transitioning willy nilly but thats not the case. Changing a fundamental aspect of one's nature is super difficult, who would have thought?
Eh, it’s barely “more modern” tbh. Blanchard’s typology hasn’t really been relevant in at least 25 years (since he was excommunicated from the WPATH, lol.) But yeah, the homophobia definitely persisted for a long time.
I’m intersex and trans and part where he lied to his intersex patients and allowed a random stranger to watch a very intimate procedure made me physically ill. This article is a very clear example of how the rights of intersex people have historically been ignored by endosex trans people and their allies, unfortunately, it’s something that still happens to this day.
That’s horrendous, but no different from how all patients were treated back then. Not a trans versus intersex thing at all, and I frankly resent the implication that the guy who is still, after going through all that, being deadnamed anf misgendered all throughout this article, and who couldn’t, as an adult, even independently consent to his own damn surgery without the doctor consulting his mom, is somehow The Bad Guy in this story who has ”allies”. He was a victim of the system as well. Just like you are a victim/participant of a global system of injustices today.
Even recently, in the US doctors in training have performed unconsenting pelvic exams on female patients under anesthesia. Horrific.
Doctors also used to lie to their patients all the time. Especially when they had an incurable disease. They just sent people home to die without telling them they were going to die.
I am both trans and intersex. I can call out the intersexism in the trans community and in the advancement of gender affirming care without demonizing trans people.
I wish you could. Instead of focusing on the doctor who had ALL the power in this scenario, you are focusing on the patient/victim who had to jump through any hoop the powers that be could dream up to access life-saving surgery. He attempted suicide three times. And THIS is your takeaway — that he was The Bad Guy worth specifically mentioning, and not the doctor? That we should primarily fight amongst ourselves instead of establishment figures? That sure is a reading, and that’s all I have to say about this.
You have figured out the time-tested strategy: if you want to be a part of society’s in-group, all you have to do is frame trans people as the dangerous enemy.
Here in the US, Dr. Stanley Biber picked up his practice and moved to Trinidad, CO, a small mining town in southeast Colorado in 1969. He became one of the first physicians to provide transition surgeries. He moved to Trinidad to escape any problems he may have in practicing in larger markets. Soon, Trinidad was the sex-change capital of the US.
The community, mostly Hispanos, Italians and Slavs who had been there for centuries to support the mining in the nearby Purgatoire River Valley, didn’t know what to make of the new patients coming to town for operations. For the next 25 years, Trinidad was one of the few places a transition surgery was possible; people came from across the country and around the world to be a patient of Dr Biber.
I had my first interaction with a trans person in 1980, I was ten years old. My grandpa ran a restaurant in Trinidad. One of his waitresses, “Big Ann,” was a former Merchant marine. She had hands the size of baseball gloves, but was always kind to me. I felt bad about the ridicule she would receive from most people.
Can someone please explain what Dr meant here? I’m confused about his perspective.
“He didn’t want to talk about the past, but most of all, he was afraid of facing his former self. “I won’t see that patient; instead, I will see an elderly man,” he said. “And that will force me to look at myself in a new light. A person doesn’t always want to be seen in their pitiful state.”
Was he just averse to seeing older patients he had worked on in the past ?
He doesnt want to see the aging in someone he knew long before because it will make him have to see his own aging and also face his own looming mortality.
Well, this is rather strange to me. Wouldn’t this be the case with everyone else we see in life OR people we see once in a blue moon? I guess we can’t really control those instances… I just find it rather odd.
It sounds like he saw this person for a quite a bit much earlier in life and then never again after that so there'd be both the vivid memories from that earlier time and a long stretch making it all much more stark. Also it's just like, his feelings about it and then his choice. I don't think there's any reason there should be a sort of standard logic to it across people and across experiences.
It sounds like he saw this person for a quite a bit much earlier in life and then never again after that so there'd be both the vivid memories from that earlier time and a long stretch making it all much more stark. Also it's just like, his feelings about it and then his choice. I don't think there's any reason there should be a sort of standard logic to it across people and across experiences.
By no means the first, but a well documented one is Emperor Elagabalus.
According to Cassius Dio, Elagabalus wore wigs and makeup, insisted on being called a woman and Empress, and "offered vast sums to any physician who could provide him with a vagina by means of incision".
Even if Dio was being untruthful to deliberately paint Elagabalus in a bad light, it shows that the concept of what we would call a trans-woman was present in Roman society such that it could be used as a way to disparage someone.
The Romanian Fairy Tale The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy (based on Ileana Simziana) was published in Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book
We know Tolkien checked out the Violet book and took notes on it. Lang was a major inspiration. And while Éowyn’s climatic victory is a spin on MacBeth’s prophecy, the story of a princess riding into battle pretending to be a male soldier, her story does echo the Romanian tale.
The article itself says there were records of 4 trans men having natal genital preserving phalloplasty previously, so this was not the first (and this only includes records he had access to, so other surgeries in other parts of the world very well may have occurred) but it was definitely still a huge step and I'm glad both patient and doctor got to live long, happy lives.
Possible-Advance3871 | a day ago
> Inna’s mother was able to call an ambulance in time to save Inna, but was afraid that, if there were a next time, she might not be so lucky. “I can come to terms with my daughter becoming my son,” she said. “But I will never get over it if I were to lose my child.”
I really liked this quote.
PissNBiscuits | a day ago
It's sad how many families don't have that same level of understanding.
John__Wick | 20 hours ago
Or love. Plenty of parents nowadays would rather disown their child than accept they are a different sex, political ideology, or religion than their parents raised them as.
JimmyJustice920 | 17 hours ago
"Nowadays" compared to when exactly? I would argue people are far more accepting of those differences compared to 20, 50, or 100 years ago.
Jaomi | 14 hours ago
Both things can be true. There are still plenty of modern parents who would rather disown their child than accept they are a different sex, but there are also more modern parents who are more accepting of those differences compared to 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
John__Wick | 14 hours ago
I say nowadays because I hope it will be different in the future.
Infamous_Swan1197 | 4 hours ago
In the UK at least there has been a major rise in transphobia recently. Compared to a few years ago, it's become a lot more prevalent in media and more common/acceptable to the general public.
TeakForest | 23 hours ago
Yet my stupid transphobic 'friend' thinks its the transitioning that makes them want to kill themselves...
OkMathematician3439 | 14 hours ago
I had a friend who asked me if I knew “the surgery” is permanent.
Edit: ex-friend
geesegoesgoose | 14 hours ago
Good edit, fair play to you.
bhputnam | 23 hours ago
I wish parents and systems were more supportive so it never got to that point in the first place
thegmohodste01 | 23 hours ago
Ohh my, the world would be like that futuristic meme if all parents thought like her
moba_fett | 17 hours ago
That's a truly loving parent right there
[OP] Quouar | a day ago
This is a really interesting article about the first female-to-male transition surgery. One element I find really interesting is how the doctors justified performing the surgery. Their viewpoints are clearly misogynistic and products of their time, and yet the care the patient received was progressive. There's a disconnect here that I find deeply fascinating.
Hugs154 | a day ago
Thanks for sharing! This is really interesting. A lot of early trans medicine was based around homophobia (i.e. they would have rather helped someone transition into a woman than allow them to be a gay man) and it is so fascinating to read about. Most of the old scales/surveys (e.g. Harry Benjamin’s Sex Orientation Scale) that they used to diagnose and categorize trans people scored straight trans people as the most “true” type of trans and others as having less conviction in their transness.
TeakForest | a day ago
This is how I believe a few Muslim countries operate. They don't believe in gay people but if you become a man or woman, whatever is opposite and fully transition then in the eyes of God its okay. Humans are strange
SeeShark | a day ago
There's a major dark side to this, where sometimes cis gay people are pressured to transition (including medically) to get on the right side of this legal framework.
TeakForest | 23 hours ago
Oh yeah I wasn't saying its okay, might help some but overall forces a decision that should always be autonomous
RiddlingVenus0 | a day ago
From what I know about Pakistan the choices are either one medically transitions or both are executed.
marxr87 | 23 hours ago
It also highlights just what an undertaking transitioning is, because if it were easy we would see more gay cis people transition for legal reasons/safety but it doesn't happen. They'd rather risk prison or death than transition. Which goes to show that it is never a trivial thing, like someone just decides to trans themselves one day.
Bliniverse | 19 hours ago
I don't think it's transitioning being difficult that's the major reason, it's that subconscious sex is innate and someone who's cis and doesn't experience dysphoria pre-transition isn't going to be able to handle having major dysphoria from transitioning for the rest of their life.
marxr87 | 14 hours ago
Ya thats my point. Politicians there days want ppl to believe that everyone is just transitioning willy nilly but thats not the case. Changing a fundamental aspect of one's nature is super difficult, who would have thought?
Firm_Zucchini_7042 | 16 hours ago
I’m guessing as long as the person “becomes” straight through transition though right?
Ver_Void | a day ago
Even more modern iterations still bump up against the idea that trans women are just weird gay guys cough Blanchard
Hugs154 | 23 hours ago
Eh, it’s barely “more modern” tbh. Blanchard’s typology hasn’t really been relevant in at least 25 years (since he was excommunicated from the WPATH, lol.) But yeah, the homophobia definitely persisted for a long time.
E2UNlover | 17 hours ago
You can still see the echos of it in the trans healthcare in for example Sweden.
You'll have a suckier time if you're not a trad wife to a man as a trans woman. Especially if you're gay on top.
Ver_Void | 21 hours ago
His ideas seem to still persist, hell so does the man himself. He crashed out on twitter over me calling myself a gay man a few years ago
moal09 | a day ago
At the end of the day, doing good is more important than saying or believing the right things.
hadeejasouffle | a day ago
that is truly just the story of trans medicine. Jules Gil-Peterson’s Histories of the Transgender Child explains it very well
OkMathematician3439 | 15 hours ago
I’m intersex and trans and part where he lied to his intersex patients and allowed a random stranger to watch a very intimate procedure made me physically ill. This article is a very clear example of how the rights of intersex people have historically been ignored by endosex trans people and their allies, unfortunately, it’s something that still happens to this day.
Ardent_Scholar | 6 hours ago
That’s horrendous, but no different from how all patients were treated back then. Not a trans versus intersex thing at all, and I frankly resent the implication that the guy who is still, after going through all that, being deadnamed anf misgendered all throughout this article, and who couldn’t, as an adult, even independently consent to his own damn surgery without the doctor consulting his mom, is somehow The Bad Guy in this story who has ”allies”. He was a victim of the system as well. Just like you are a victim/participant of a global system of injustices today.
Even recently, in the US doctors in training have performed unconsenting pelvic exams on female patients under anesthesia. Horrific.
Doctors also used to lie to their patients all the time. Especially when they had an incurable disease. They just sent people home to die without telling them they were going to die.
OkMathematician3439 | 5 hours ago
I am both trans and intersex. I can call out the intersexism in the trans community and in the advancement of gender affirming care without demonizing trans people.
Ardent_Scholar | 3 hours ago
I wish you could. Instead of focusing on the doctor who had ALL the power in this scenario, you are focusing on the patient/victim who had to jump through any hoop the powers that be could dream up to access life-saving surgery. He attempted suicide three times. And THIS is your takeaway — that he was The Bad Guy worth specifically mentioning, and not the doctor? That we should primarily fight amongst ourselves instead of establishment figures? That sure is a reading, and that’s all I have to say about this.
You have figured out the time-tested strategy: if you want to be a part of society’s in-group, all you have to do is frame trans people as the dangerous enemy.
OkMathematician3439 | 3 hours ago
My OG comment was literally focused on the doctor but it seems like you just want to argue.
[OP] Quouar | 15 hours ago
I'm so sorry! I missed that part of the article. I am so sorry for your experiences.
OkMathematician3439 | 14 hours ago
No worries, it’s not something you had control over.
Hopeful_Thanks9471 | 8 hours ago
Here in the US, Dr. Stanley Biber picked up his practice and moved to Trinidad, CO, a small mining town in southeast Colorado in 1969. He became one of the first physicians to provide transition surgeries. He moved to Trinidad to escape any problems he may have in practicing in larger markets. Soon, Trinidad was the sex-change capital of the US.
The community, mostly Hispanos, Italians and Slavs who had been there for centuries to support the mining in the nearby Purgatoire River Valley, didn’t know what to make of the new patients coming to town for operations. For the next 25 years, Trinidad was one of the few places a transition surgery was possible; people came from across the country and around the world to be a patient of Dr Biber.
I had my first interaction with a trans person in 1980, I was ten years old. My grandpa ran a restaurant in Trinidad. One of his waitresses, “Big Ann,” was a former Merchant marine. She had hands the size of baseball gloves, but was always kind to me. I felt bad about the ridicule she would receive from most people.
skiborobo | 19 hours ago
Can someone please explain what Dr meant here? I’m confused about his perspective.
“He didn’t want to talk about the past, but most of all, he was afraid of facing his former self. “I won’t see that patient; instead, I will see an elderly man,” he said. “And that will force me to look at myself in a new light. A person doesn’t always want to be seen in their pitiful state.”
Was he just averse to seeing older patients he had worked on in the past ?
Teantis | 18 hours ago
He doesnt want to see the aging in someone he knew long before because it will make him have to see his own aging and also face his own looming mortality.
skiborobo | 11 hours ago
Well, this is rather strange to me. Wouldn’t this be the case with everyone else we see in life OR people we see once in a blue moon? I guess we can’t really control those instances… I just find it rather odd.
Teantis | 10 hours ago
It sounds like he saw this person for a quite a bit much earlier in life and then never again after that so there'd be both the vivid memories from that earlier time and a long stretch making it all much more stark. Also it's just like, his feelings about it and then his choice. I don't think there's any reason there should be a sort of standard logic to it across people and across experiences.
skiborobo | 9 hours ago
Thanks for helping me see it. Much appreciated.
Teantis | 10 hours ago
It sounds like he saw this person for a quite a bit much earlier in life and then never again after that so there'd be both the vivid memories from that earlier time and a long stretch making it all much more stark. Also it's just like, his feelings about it and then his choice. I don't think there's any reason there should be a sort of standard logic to it across people and across experiences.
tigole | 23 hours ago
The first trans man, Michael Dillon, performed gender affirming surgery on the first British trans woman, Roberta Cowell.
MaliceTakeYourPills | 20 hours ago
The “first known transgender man to undergo a phalloplasty”, not the first trans man
tigole | 11 hours ago
Who was then?
Sahaal_17 | 8 hours ago
By no means the first, but a well documented one is Emperor Elagabalus.
According to Cassius Dio, Elagabalus wore wigs and makeup, insisted on being called a woman and Empress, and "offered vast sums to any physician who could provide him with a vagina by means of incision".
Even if Dio was being untruthful to deliberately paint Elagabalus in a bad light, it shows that the concept of what we would call a trans-woman was present in Roman society such that it could be used as a way to disparage someone.
Lost_Paladin89 | 11 hours ago
Some cave trans man who used a leather binder? I mean, girl turns into boy is an old myth. Take the story of Iphis in Greek mythology.
Maybe the most influential myth is Ileana Simziana which directly inspired Tolkien.
brandybuck-baggins | 9 hours ago
This is very interesting. Do you know which Tolkien story takes inspiration from that? Thanks
Lost_Paladin89 | 8 hours ago
The Romanian Fairy Tale The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy (based on Ileana Simziana) was published in Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book
We know Tolkien checked out the Violet book and took notes on it. Lang was a major inspiration. And while Éowyn’s climatic victory is a spin on MacBeth’s prophecy, the story of a princess riding into battle pretending to be a male soldier, her story does echo the Romanian tale.
Of course, minus the gender change at the end.
noeinan | 15 hours ago
The article itself says there were records of 4 trans men having natal genital preserving phalloplasty previously, so this was not the first (and this only includes records he had access to, so other surgeries in other parts of the world very well may have occurred) but it was definitely still a huge step and I'm glad both patient and doctor got to live long, happy lives.