My brother has confided in me and I told him he was being a parasite for wanting to start taking estrogen
He apparently does not like the feeling of being a guy, or growing into one, and in turn feels he must become a female to achieve happiness
My mother of course tells him she loves him no matter what, etc. but I'm at a loss here
>>17260734
How does that mean being a parasite? What exactly bothers you about this?
Not quite sure what you are asking here. He will mostly still be the same person, just with a different appearance. Hes just not comfortable with how he looks or what he might be in the future and wants to fix it. They will still be your sibling.
>>17260758
Because I'm an asshole who can't assimilate with current year phenomena
It bothers me because you're taking what makes you, you, and altering it completely because you're unhappy about the current situation
I get that I'm supposed to be supportive but I've never been that kind of person
>>17260771
Girls suck, dude
>Brother chooses to change gender
>Takes pills, has support of mother
>confide in sister/brother to build trust
>Sister/brother pissed for no rational reason
>calls me 'parasite' for becoming a woman
Quit the bigotry and support your brothers choices. There's nothing wrong with wanting to change gender. That being said, if he's underage and perhaps making a brash decision, sit down and have a rational conversation about his choice.
>>17260777
Being a dude is what makes you you? I'd leave your bro alone and let him do whatever, it isn't your life. Also your general demeanor makes you sound like a tool.
>>17260777
It's not just about being "unhappy"
It's about literally feeling not at home in your own skin, due to your brain telling you one thing, and your body saying another
It's a physical problem, not a mental one.
>>17260796
He's in his freshman year of highschool and I'm away at college in another state
>>17260802
How so?
>>17260734
Current responses are more than accommodating
like
>>17260797
said you sound like a tool, with a stubborn and higher than thou attitude about gender change
i hope not for your brother's sake
but then again you did call him a parasite
follow the damn instructions I wrote
if rushed decision
then rational conversation
else let the kid live
>>17260796
He cannot get rid of his y chromosome, cannot be a woman.
>>17260803
I don't have the study at hand, but I can probably find it once I get home from work.
Basically what happens is that while you're stilldeveloping in the womb, something causes your brain to start rewiring itself as if you were the opposite sex. The problem here is your body keeps on developing as your original sex, and when you pop out, your brain thinks you're(or it is) the opposite sex of your body.
Part of the study was doing MRI scans (or something of the sort) on cis men and women, and trans men and women.
Most results showed that the brain waves trans men and women were much more similar to the gender that they identified as, than the one they were assigned to at birth, BEFORE they'd even started hormone therapy.
Oh, I disagree. There is ABSOLUTELY something wrong with wanting to change your gender.
Current PC/SJW culture aside, it's pretty clearly a symptom of mental illness.
>>17260820
Yes that's me
I have an over inflated ego and a superiority complex
I guess it's just best to ignore it then, thanks anyway
>>17260827
>cis men and women
am I the victim of a cruel joke?
>>17260825
So do these people. http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/ais
Yet they're BORN with vaginas. Think of people with gender identity disorder as being intersex, parts of their brain are measurably different than ours. An MtF pre-hormonal treatment will have things that are female in their brain.
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.85.5.6564
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/12/3132
Why a parasite? Cause you'll have to share your easy-mode with him?
look at hospitalization and suicide rates for people who have tried to transition. it's not a good life. he is mentally ill. its just a matter of if that is the right treatment to his illness (I don't think it is)
>>17260847
No.
Cis is just the word that means opposite of trans.
It's a nice way of saying normal
>>17260857
it's further labelling and dividing is what it is
>>17260849
Youre ignoring the point. He will never be able to be a woman. He will be able to get close, have tens of thousands of dollars of surgery, but there will always be something missing and it will lead to depression
>>17260868
In most cases it comes to that due to unacceptance from their environment, not because they feel something is "missing"
>>17260868
The takeaway from what I said was supposed to be that sex is a very complicated issue. It's not as clear cut as Y chromosome or no Y chromosome. That's usually a good enough metric to boil things down into, but it's not a perfect and infallible one when dealing with people who are intersex. Why should it be absolute for people with gender dysphoria either?
>>17260885
Bone frame shape, chromosomes, hormones, take your pick.
>>17260857
"Nice". I am not sure I agree. It feels like the trans people are so insecure that the need to have non-trans people labeled, which feels as much of a marginalisation as anything they get called.
Seriously, I dislike being called cis. I don't see why I should be labelled that way - I am simply non-trans. Just like I am not gay and not bi, I am simply not trans.
For people who are uncomfortable in their own skin they should realise labels can make people uncomfortable, which seems like they are just massive insecure hypocrites.
(I am not anti trans. I just hate the term cis.)
>>17260902
I used to dislike it too, but you just get used to it if you're around/talk with trans people.
It's not exclusively used in gender discussion either, it's pretty prevalent in chemistry.
>>17260897
It's not just one. That's the problem. Boiling it down into any one category is a gross oversimplification. Chromosomes, genitalia, the parts of the brain that are affected in those with gender dysphoria, secondary sex characteristics and on all play a part, and people who are intersex will have some but not others- and so too will those with gender dysphoria.
That's where things get sticky. In people like you and I, in the majority of the population- any one of those will be enough to pick out someone as male or female. In people who are intersex, have gender identity disorder, are XXY (you could just as easily say XX is female as you could say Y is male) or are born with a few other things that will cause other abnormalities and deviations from the norm, it's not as easy as saying "you're _________ because ___________". If you boil it down to one category you'll put some of them on the wrong side, and who gets left out depends on which category you use.
>>17260914
Op's brother is not a hermaphrodite or intersex. He is a male that believes he can be female. He cannot.
>>17260919
Please read the two sources I cited here. >>17260849
People who have gender identity disorder have measurable differences in them that are in line with the gender they identify with.
>>17260912
I have enough labels to deal with. I don't need more just so a minority group feels more accepted. Do african americans need a socially acceptable term for the people that enslaved them for years? Not that I am aware of. Do gays need a unique term? I guess they DO have straight, but that feels like it could apply to trans too.
(Really, why isn't that a thing? Just trans-gay and trans-straight, and trans-bi. Simple terms, and everyone else can just be gay or straight or bi. Everyone is happy.)
>>17260941
Gender and sexuality are in no way related.
>>17260941
'When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression'
If you can't handle being called something that literally denotes what you are, without any malice behind it whatsoever, then I really don't know how you've made it this far in life.
Don't listen to the idiots in this thread. You're doing the right thing by not enabling this behavior that will only further fuck up whatever problem makes him want to be a girl.
He won't get that kind of tough love from anyone else, from the looks of how your mother reacted to it.
>>17260914
Being born with genetalia that isn`t compatible with the physical rest of you is ABNORMAL, it is a terrible example. That is the same as saying people who are obsessed with losing limbs is normal and acceptable because there are people who are born without them. Who are you to tell them otherwise? They feel as if they shouldn`t have limbs.
>>17260953
Not him, and I disagree with a lot of what he said, but cis is a stupid term and is so for both sides. "Oh you're a cis-female, I'm a trans-woman." Most transsexuals don't want to do that. They want to transition, and be recognized as a woman (or man) in the same way you would recognize a "cis" person as their gender.
There are a few who drag politics into it to try to further acceptance. And I'm (unfortunately) acquaintances with one who outted a friend of mine to quite a few other people, just because my friend mistakenly confided in her. Cis shouldn't be a word people use except perhaps in clinical or scientific settings where it is necessary and relevant, it's not equal, it's divisive.
>>17260964
See
>>17260929
And to answer your question:
>That is the same as saying people who are obsessed with losing limbs is normal and acceptable because there are people who are born without them. Who are you to tell them otherwise? They feel as if they shouldn`t have limbs.
I'm aware of that condition. However, there are specific anatomical and (as another anon mentioned here >>17260827, hormonal during development in the womb) differences in transsexuals- they are born that way in the EXACT same way intersex people are.
To the best of my knowledge limbless people do not inherently have different amounts of hormones, or are born destined to identify as limbless. The brain will adapt to the fact they are born without certain limbs or later on lose certain limbs. Although I have to confess ignorance - having my only information come from watching a documentary years ago, I imagine the issue is similar in these people who will go to drastic measures to lose their limbs as they are in transsexuals. The brain probably does play a heavy part. The difference being that their brain is failing to recognize the limb as a part of their body, whereas a person who has gender dysphoria's brain has parts that are specifically in line with those of a female's or male's, despite having the anatomy, chromosomes, etc. of the sex they do not identify with.
Why we choose to treat one by altering the body and one by altering the brain, I assume is because women and men are perfectly natural occurrences in the human population. If your brain is in line with identifying as one of those, it's not the same thing as a brain that can't recognize a limb as your own. Even in those with gender dysphoria or those who are intersex, they will still identify as one or the other. That said, this is all speculation from a regular person who knows very little - not even enough to remember the name - of that disorder. I imagine that the people who treat these conditions have their reasons.
>>17260949
And how does anything I have said change that? It would be a denotation of someone who had opted to change their gender, and their sexuality. It would make things a lot simpler to deal with.
>>17260953
Fuck off. I have not been "privileged" at all in my life. Minorly disabled, bullied, poor, my only advantages were being a white male and that has done jack shit for me - if anything it has lead to a life of no-one trusting me (in one neighbourhood I was walking to visit a friend, in the rain, and I had the cops called on me for being menacing. Cops apologised to me but they clearly were ready to arrest me based purely on the fact that I was tall and had a black jacket with the hood up. In the rain.)
Been labelled, harassed, treated like a criminal... So don't tell me that I am a privileged person angry due to ignorance. I am just uncomfortable being given yet another label based on nothing more than the lack of a desire to change my body.
You know what I would prefer to call trans people? Regular people who made different life choices than my own. But that isn't practical, so I use the name they gave themselves. I didn't choose to be called cis however, and I dislike having it forced on me.
I know if non-trans people tried to call trans people something else, there would be a fucking uproar and everyone would be unhappy. So why do non-trans people have to bend over and accept a label, especially when some of us don't like it?
And thats why I see it as hypocrisy.
>>17260734
Unlike everyone else in this liberal infested thread, I feel you OP: I can't understand this trend and how people don't think of it as a mental illness.
However, understand that your brother will probably end up doing it anyways.
im so glad all this stuff wasn't around when I was a kid
I mean my parents never would have let me, but I would have been dumb enough to be curious/ask about it
I feel so bad for these kids who are changing their gender so young. They have absolutely no idea the magnitude of what they are doing to their future selves
>>17261007
That doesn`t mean these are normal occurrences anyway, they do not apply to the general and normal population. You are just explaining the phenomena. As for treatment, seems like cosmetic surgery doesn`t fix the problem on the long run and it doesn`t matter whether it stems from social unacceptance or something else. Many of the cases where a child expresses the will to be the opposite sex, the will just fades away and today parents force this foolish fantasy to reality thanks to media. I had this will for years as a teenager, it disappeared when I got more confident and accepting my body changing. That`s just me perhaps, but I am more accepting of a man deciding to dress up as a girl and accepting what nature gave them more than a man who cuts off healthy and functioning organs.
>>17261047
You have to go through psychiatric evaluation to be allowed to transition. It's done to weed out people who aren't actually transsexual, because it definitely isn't something you can just take back.
>>17261059
That's not actually true, many people who transition are much happier with their body after transitioning. Will it cure depression or any other ills? Inherently make society accept them? No, no of course not. But it will address what they have transitioned for. That's like saying people with depression should not be allowed to be placed on antidepressants if they also have other issues as well, why bother fixing one thing if you don't fix it all?
Anyway they don't let just anyone transition. You have to go through a lengthy psychiatric evaluation to be allowed to. Which I do agree is more necessary than ever, because there are, unfortunately, people in this world who do choose to identify as transsexual, to fit in with their group of friends or whatever else, when they aren't and people who would willfully push others into identifying as it as well. That's true for anything. Take /adv/ for instance, they constantly tell everyone who comes on here who has trouble putting their dick inside their girlfriend - or taking a dick inside them - that they have vaginismus. That's a quite rare medical condition. Meanwhile the more likely cause is nerves and/or insufficient arousal, which would have the same exact effect of causing people to tighten and clench up making penetration (at that point in time) difficult if not impossible.
>>17261062
Most places will also make you do a "trial run" where you have to essentially do a checklist of "guy things" or "girl things" (like buying clothes or coming out to a certain number of people) before they'll give you hormones. If you have an unmedicated mental illness, they won't give you hormones.
Transition is not some easy reversible process that anyone with an identity crisis can choose to do at the drop of a hat. It really does change your entire body.
>>17261089
Yeah, afaik you have to live as the gender you identify with for a certain period of time before you're allowed to begin transitioning. It really isn't as easy to do it legally as some people believe.
>>17260777
You should trll him what you said here. It doesn't sound like you're really transphobic, just worried about losing her as a brother. You won't be able to see the same person that you grew up with anymore.
support him or separate from him
Pick one of those two.
Anything else will damage his life or drive a wedge between you.
>>17260734
you really shouldn't give your brother a hard time like this. For one thing your victimising him over something thats not his fault, your basically saying "Im going to be a dick to you for being honest with me"
>its not like he is having an easy time right now, I mean geeze he didnt even hardly get out of bed yesterday.
>And yes i know who you are and who your brother is.
>all these people saying it's ok to be a fucking tranny
Op beat the shit out of your brother for being a faggot
Don't let these current year Carl the cucks tell you you're wrong. Trannies are degenerates, you need to do your part to keep the world clean.
>>17260734
>but I'm at a loss here
at a loss for what? seems like you already decided to be unsupportive. what advice are you looking for?
