Channel 4 Documentary

[richard31uk (imported)]

For those of you who either missed or could not view the channel 4 documentary here is a link that gives some details of what was aired hope some of you find it useful.

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsit ... index.html

[A-1 (imported)]

Uncle Flo said:

"

As is my way with these things I'm worried. There will be a backlash from all of this attention. The usual " I know best and no other opinion counts" people will be working hard to make sure this positive approach counts for as little as possible. There will be calls to eradicate the "perverts". There will be shouts of "crime against nature". There will be calls to psychoanalyze anyone who has ever had a desire to alter their sexuality (The poor things are quite mad, you know). Some of our members, friends and even strangers to us who feel the need to change their body are emotionaly fragile as it is, we need to be aware and offer them all the support they deserve and require if this issue heats up. --FLO--

"

**********************

I don't know. I'm age 60 and have spent all my life dealing with other people, which often involved trying to please others. I'm the age now where I deserve respect.

If other people want to do whatever with their bodies, I say, "so what?" - as long as they don't impose on unwilling others.

But the line stops here: I will do as I wish with my own body. We all have the basic rights to do as we wish, with the understanding that each person's rights end where the next person's rights begin.

You don't like it? Tough shit.

A member may some day be famous and make the Letterman or Leno show.

...although try to not schedule during the Easter Season. They are ALWAYS trying to CRUCIFY someone for a sick laugh or two.

[JesusA (imported)]

Are there any reactions to the documentary from U.K. members who were able to watch it?

What worked? What didn't work? What did you like? What did you not like? The version shown on U.S. television may be edited a bit. Here's your chance to have some input.

[calmeilles (imported)]

Haven't seen it yet. Will try signing up for C4's view on demand system this evening if I can.

Meanwhile it received an odd review in The Guardian. Odd in tone, as if the author wanted to make fun of the issue but didn't quite dare.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv_and_radio/ ... 94,00.html

There was a single criticism though:

"As well as literally, the film didn't have any balls metaphorically. It told the stories without attempting to ask or answer questions about how we construct masculinity, what there might be to fear in belonging to an ostensibly privileged gender that you would rather cut off its physical markers than remain part of it, or what part an internalised cultural hatred of homosexuality might have played in the men's decisions. There was definitely something missing."

Perhaps a valid comment about masculinity, but I wonder if the casual conflation of homosexuality with eunuchism was the critic's or the program's?

Matthew

[calmeilles (imported)]

"Most users ever online was 1,086, Yesterday at 11:27 PM."

[dingbat (imported)]

Hi,

I saw the documentary last night. As TheFraj already mentioned, I was a bit surprised by the choice of people they included, but perhaps that’s more down to my own ignorance about the subject.

I found myself having no problem whatsoever with those who felt themselves to be a third gender and wanted castration for that reason, I had more difficulty with those who appeared to have made the decision based on some sort of strange logic about proving to the world that we all have the freedoms to do whatever we want to our own bodies. If you take a look at today’s vote on the subject that Channel Four are running, it asks ‘should men be allowed to voluntarily have castration if they wish it?’ and over 80% of people who have voted say they should (based on ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers).

In principle I agree that we all should have the ability to have a body we are comfortable with but I’m not sure about ‘political’ reasons for castration.

I’m transgendered (although I don’t much like that term), biologically female but consider myself androgynous. I have considered gender reassignment surgery but decided it is not for me because I don’t feel myself to be wholly male or wholly female. I feel myself to belong to a third gender which is neither one nor the other. It’s a very different situation for me and I am fortunate in that I have naturally very low oestrogen levels, no idea why (although perhaps it lends some credence to the biological not social argument) but my oestrogen levels have been about half what is considered normal for all of my life and therefore my sex drive is very, very low. The interesting thing, which wasn’t covered by the programme, is that my ‘love’ drive (if you can have that) isn’t altered, I still want to find someone to love and to be loved by, it’s just that the sexual angle isn’t really relevant to me (not sure if that makes sense, sorry).

In the transgendered world, if you want to be considered for Gender Reassignment Surgery, you have to fulfill the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s ‘Standards of Care’ before you will be considered. The Harry Benjamin rules are very complex and involve all kinds of (not necessarily appropriate) psychological testing. I know of many mixed gender people (myself included) who find the Harry Benjamin rules unacceptable. For myself, I find them unacceptable for a number of reasons but the primary reason is that they attempt to ‘lump’ all transgendered people into one group, into something concrete that can be proscribed for. I do not believe this is true and I do not believe that this is a fair OR an accurate representation of mixed gender people. Thus, in my opinion, the Harry Benjamin rules are fairly pointless. Perhaps they work for some people, I’m not sure, but they don’t get to the heart of the issue, they’re much more concerned about the ‘why’s’ and ‘wherefore’s’ and not the reality. Perhaps the reality is too difficult for society to deal with? I’m not sure.

I was genuinely interested in this documentary because it raised the issue of mixed gender without pushing a third gendered person into the ‘transgendered’ environment where we doesn’t necessarily belong.

My own situation is obviously very different to yours but I think, in many ways, we probably have similar situations to confront.

I thought the Channel Four documentary was fair and reasonably non-judgemental although I would query the inclusion of one person in particular who appeared to have a totally different agenda for castration and that certainly impacted VERY negatively on the documentary as, in my opinion, it confused the issue and added in all sorts of other issues which really don’t need to be included in a documentary about eunuch-ism. This person was clearly interested in ‘experimental sexuality’ and that’s fair enough, I’ve got no problem with that but I just, personally, don’t think he belonged in the same documentary as his situation was markedly different from, for example, Roger’s, Zee’s or Bill’s. (I’m not talking about Master Rick, we didn’t see enough about him for me to make a judgement).

Perhaps someone here can enlighten me? My previous assumption about eunuch-ism was that it fell into a third gender of people who felt themselves to be (like me) fairly androgynous. The addition of testicles felt like a ‘growth’ which they wished to be rid of (in much the same way as I have an issue with my breasts, feeling them to be almost a ‘tumour’ which shouldn’t be there, hard to explain but it’s how I feel, this doesn’t meant that I want to be male, it just means I don’t feel comfortable having breasts as they ‘sexualise’ me in a way I don’t feel comfortable with). I’m now not sure as I felt that the documentary seemed to imply that castration had proved NOT to be the solution for Zee (for example) as they ended the programme telling how depressed he was and how he was now considering taking Testosterone injections. It’s left me rather confused. Was he too young? I don’t think so, I knew when I was about 5 about my own androgyny and, as I got older, I just got more sure. Zee seemed to have other issues. So I'm not sure if he felt fairly represented by the documentary.

Please excuse me for butting in to your group and I really do hope that no-one minds but I would like to understand further, not for any mawkish reason, but because it impacts upon my own life in a very real way.

Thanks.

PS If anyone hasn't seen them and would like to read the Harry Benjamin Rules, they can be found here : http://www.wpath.org/Documents2/socv6.pdf

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

Please, continue to post your thoughts. I have no problem hearing from you. Your points are well taken. I'll have to see the documentary for myself before I can comment on it. As to "experimental sexuality", that seems to be what leads some to think about castration and then to realize that their situation fits well with the subject. In my case I've been sexually adventurous since quite young. I was therefore receptive to the idea of castration. Also I realized that I didn't quite belong in any of the generally accepted catagories. This is not the usual path but certainly not unknown. --FLO--

[dingbat (imported)]

Hi Uncle Flo,

Thanks for replying to me.

I want to clarify what I said a little bit because, on reflection, it sounds horribly judgemental and I really didn't intend it to. My problem with the person who, in my opinion, didn't belong in the documentary, was not so much a problem with the choices he had made but with the way it was portrayed. Without wishing to trivialise, it felt a bit as though they should have had a little man with a trumpet playing a fanfare and holding up a board which said 'and now for the salacious, titillating bit' ( ) and, for me, the problem with that was that I felt it slightly undermined an otherwise very genuine attempt to tackle the issue sensitively and fairly.

It's hard to explain without sounding as though I'm making judgements about the particular choices this man made when that's really not what I'm saying. This was a man who had been castrated but had then gone on to partly have SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) by way of having a vagina 'made' (sorry for my poor terminology), he had also had a urethra re-positioning. Now, I don't have any problem whatsoever with those choices, entirely up to him, my problem was that I think it complicated the issue of eunuch-ism. They also included comments about him (made by the narrator) which seemed rather out of place (and sounded very judgmental) I'm not saying that eunuch-ism a simple issue, of course it's not, but it just felt very odd to have included him in this particular documentary.

For me, and bear in mind that I'm speaking only for myself here and I have no special knowledge or support for what I say other than my own experiences, I don't feel that I'm either male or female, I feel that I'm de-sexualised as a person (which isn't quite the same as being non-sexual in my opinion). This person seemed to have dual-gender which, again only in my opinion, just didn't seem to sit well in the documentary. I just found his inclusion quite confusing but that probably reflects more on me than it does on anything else.

I hope that's clarified what I meant a bit? Hopefully others who've seen it will be able to give their interpretations too.

[sapient (imported)]

I would also like to extend a welcome to dingbat. Your posts are thought-provoking and interesting. One of the things about this community that amazes me, is its diversity and openness. There are people here that doesn't fit any mold. And that's what's so very good. ("E pluribus unum" and all that...)

I believe that sexuality and gender are phenomenon far too complicated to fit into a binary system with only one or two dimensions. There are probably several more factors in this, and they seem to me to have a lot more nuances then our dicotomies represent. But equiped with poor concepts, we still have to make the best we can in life. But much of the confusion and distress, the feeling of being lost and out of place, may come from not being able to address the problem in the first place.

Not to long ago the difference between sexuality and gender were obscure and gay people were sometimes called "inverted". We're only just past that and who can say what we will discover about "the human condition" in the comming decades?

[dingbat (imported)]

Thank you Sapient and Salami for the welcome.

Sapient, I think you've hit the nail on the head. I pm'ed someone earlier with the comment that I thought a lot of my confusion centered on definitions which, I think, is what you are saying too?

If my memory serves me correctly (and I'm searching back 20 years now!), wasn't it Havelock Ellis who first got into the 'inversion of sexuality' thing? I think he wrote his book in the late 1800's but I could be wrong and you're totally right, he did indeed call homosexuality an 'inversion'. But then I think it got even worse, it became a 'mental illness' for quite a long time, diagnostically entered into all the psychiatric textbooks etc. Now, I suppose a similar thing happens to those people who are labelled as either 'Gender Dyspohric' or as having 'Body Identity Disorder' (especially bearing in mind that the 'dys/dis' comes from the Greek meaning 'bad, difficult, wrong or, in some translations, simply 'ill') - doesn't really say much for clinical progress, does it?

I don't want to derail this thread but I'm interested in the definition thing. I think I'm defined in all kinds of ways depending on who's doing the defining. Those who don't really know me probably define me as a woman, those who know me would either say that I'm transgendered or bi-sexual. I don't feel comfortable with these terms though because they don't accurately describe what I am, they perhaps describe aspects of me but not all of me. I have many t/g friends who honestly believe that I really do want an SRS but I'm just too afraid (not true) and I have many gay friends who think I'm too scared to admit to being gay (also not true!) - the odd thing is, people seem to be able to deal with most of the above definitions (although most do find 'transgendered' hard to comprehend) but what no-one can deal with is the 'asexual' aspect of me, it's as though there is some law which insists that I MUST be sexual in some way in order to fulfill my requirements to be a human being. I find that quite difficult to understand.

I'm finding the replies really interesting and I'm very grateful to you for being so welcoming.

Thank you.