| Who We Are & Who We Are Not |
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| Global Warning | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Tuesday, 23 May 2006 | |
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Springfield, VA, USA. We are not a twelve step program. You will find no proscriptive structured path promising salvation.
The Transsexual Symposium communicates the information necessary for making rational decisions but believes that people born transsexual are responsible for making their own decisions based on the best available medical and scientific knowledge and data.
We are not a religious organization. Our viewpoint is not based on Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism, Neo-paganism, Wiccan or dietary beliefs. We will avoid religious arguments dogmatically other than to point out that a position under discussion may be a matter of personal belief rather than factual science.
We are not academics. Discussions of post-post-modernism, gender representations, and other academic trends do not interest us. We are not writing a dissertation or a paper for submission to an academic journal. If anything, we are the editors of a transsexual journal offering papers and research for peer review. We are not driven by an imperative to publish or perish.
We are not a gossip column. There will be no articles or lists outing various individuals or speculating on their original sexual organs. Transsexual Symposium takes every effort to preserve the anonymity of people who, for whatever, do not wish to be identified. Our defenses are strong and specifically constructed for this site.
We are not a beauty or a glamor site. You will not find butterflies or faux girly cuteness. There are no photographs of made-up men and women taken at professional sittings. There are no tips on becoming a better drag queen or king, no fashion recommendations for cross-dressers, transvestites, or people trying to get in touch with their feminine or masculine side. If an individual wants make-up tips, there are more than enough sites on the internet. Transsexual Symposium is about and limited to people born transsexual and the medical treatment and scientific evidence supporting them.
We certainly are not magicians. We offer no quick and easy solutions for successful transition, no promises of one hundred percent certainty that this and not that is the one true path. There are no guarantees of success: some make it through transition, some remain stuck in the middle, and some never try. Many of us die.
We are neither gender spectrumists nor believers that embryonic development always gets it right. Outward presentation is distinct from sexual organs is distinct from core identity; sexual preference is a wild card distinct from all three.
Although nature and genetics usually get mammalian sexual development correct (or aborts the fetus before term), there are instances where the system misfires and the embryo or fetus survives. Those instances are the focus of the Transsexual Symposium: A female brain in an outwardly male body, a female body imprisoning a male identity, a body that is neither male nor female. Our interest lies in the relatively rare occurrence of the intersexed individual on the cusp between male and female.
Transsexual Symposium provides a single source for the scientific and medical documentation that transsexuality is not:
Unless specifically asked or challenged in public forum, we do not address whether transsexuality is the will of God. The scientific evidence is clear.
We do not believe that a person born transsexual should look like a drag queen or king, crossdressers, impersonators or impressionists. Neither do we believe that there is a single proper and correct mode of dress for the transsexual individuals, a single acceptable standard imposed by the medical gatekeepers.
Everyone is different and, like the world beyond transsexuality, some people dress like their mothers and fathers, some like hookers or rock and film stars, some like high school sweethearts or rodeo cowboys, and some like Glamor and Vogue magazines.
Costume and outward presentation varies between cultures, classes, and individuals. No one presentational mode is preferable (although we would recommend dressing for success rather than attention).
We do not engage in partisan politics. We will, however, advocate policies and laws that provide legal protection and medical support for people born transsexual and argue against those laws and medical practices that we believe are detrimental using the best available scientific and medical research. If the data does not support a political or societal position, even our own, Transsexual Symposium will say so. We do not support personal opinions and political agendas unsupported by the evidence, no matter how intellectually or emotionally comforting they may be.
When there is a conflict between preconception and research data, Transsexual Symposium defaults to the data no matter what personal or societal cognitive dissonance or religious uneasiness may occur. We will always chose facts over preferences and reproducible results over assumptions and beliefs.
We began Transsexual Symposium after realizing there was no single source that pulled together all the disparate disciplines and studies that the professional community needs to effectively serve people born transsexual. Much of the information on the internet is antidotal and unsupported by research. At the other extreme, one discipline many not recognize the utility of a study in another discipline outside their own. Transsexual Symposium, perhaps foolhardily, attempts to provide a single, readily available source relevant medical and scientific information and data.
One of us is a professional scientist, one of us is an English Masters working in a Corporate Information Office. Both of us have a personal interest in the success of this site.
We plan to be here for a while.
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 17 September 2006 ) | |
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