Well, if it's a Berkeley definition it must be right, eh?
I think I fit the TF definition to about 80% - but I'll carry forward Zylia's 'Happy Transvestite' tag - I don't think that's too far from Eddie Izzard's "I'm just a lesbian in a man's body.."
Kx
"Put some lipstick on - Perfume your neck and slip your high heels on
Rinse and curl your hair - Loosen your hips, and get a dress to wear" Stefani Germanotta
For those who can make the diagnosis, so they can then treat it, and then bill for the treatment, it's not worthless. hahaOriginally Posted by donnalee
Call me a turnip if you want. Just so you pay me and let me go out and have fun en femme.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning
This has to be my favorite interview with Blanchard because in it he exposes how the idea of paraphilias has no scientific basis.
Blanchard: ... I’m not going to say that there is no gold standard of what sexual behavior’s purpose is.
Motherboard: And what is that?
Blanchard: I would say if one could start from scratch, ignore all the history of removing homosexuality from the DSM, normal sexuality is whatever is related to reproduction.
So Blanchard believes that the "purpose" of sexual activity is "reproduction." Any sexual activity that is not related to or preparatory to reproductive sex, although it may be benign, is abnormal (paraphilic) including homosexuality. That's a moral or religious idea not a scientific one. Darwinism 101 teaches that nature assigns no purpose to what happens. The purpose of sex and which activities are permissible are for the preachers, philosophers and legislators to determine. All we can say scientifically is that, under the right circumstances, sexual activity may result in reproduction and that's why we're still here. The fact that most people occasionally engage in reproductive sex does not mean that all the other sexual activities they engage in that are strictly recreational are somehow "unnatural."
People who experience distress over their "paraphilic" activities have no scientific basis for feeling bad. They need a preacher not a doctor. If their sexual activity involves criminal behavior (pedophilia, bestiality, rape) they need a lawyer because they are not "sick" they're just criminals.
Semantics. Blanchard could have called it the evolutionary purpose or function and mean the same thing. The evolutionary purpose of sexual behavior IS reproduction, although it has a (evolutionary) social function as well for primates like bonobos and humans.
(By the way, that's why I don't fully agree with Blanchard's statements)
Last edited by Zylia; 12-13-2013 at 03:50 PM.
Nonsense! There is no evolutionary "purpose" to anything. Purpose and function are not equivalent.
Semantics:
Full Definition of FUNCTION
1: professional or official position : occupation
2: the action for which a person or thing is specially fitted or used or for which a thing exists : purpose
Source: Merriam-Webster
It's not just semantics. Function is how something works, purpose implies intention. It's true that a function of sexual activity is reproduction. It's not true that nature intended for that to be the one and only function of sexual activity. Nature knows nothing about "fetishes." These only exist as ideas in the minds of people. The idea that Nature has a purpose is anthropomorphism. The truth is that nature is not a person and doesn't "care" what you do. Nature didn't wake up one day and decide to evolve the foot so that people could walk - making walking the "purpose" of feet. They work very well for that function, nevertheless. So people who use their feet to kick soccer balls around rather than just for walking are not perverts in the eyes of nature. Nature also doesn't care what you do with your other body parts. You can use them for whatever function you wish. Deciding the purpose of anything is an area that is of concern to philosophers and religions, not science.
Let me start by saying you're preaching to the choir here about 'purpose in nature' to use an (in)appropriate idiom. I'm not a religious person. I'm Dutch. I like Richard Dawkins. You can try to explain it again and again, but this is not the point I'm trying to make in the first place.
What I'm trying to say is that I think you're reading too much into Blanchard's use of the word 'purpose' in that interview. I don't think he really used the word purpose the way you think he did. He's actually not all that interested in morality if you read the rest of the interview.
Last edited by Zylia; 12-13-2013 at 08:50 PM.
That's where we will have to disagree. I think that's exactly what he means (paraphilias are "unnatural") because otherwise the whole idea of paraphilias collapses . And Blanchard is a paraphiliaphiliac. Of course, and I'm sure Blanchard would agree, some sexual proclivities are morally objectionable and need to be banned because they involve force and injury to others who do not or can not give their consent. But that's not a concern of science. Science does not have the answers to every problem.
You're moving the goalposts. Some sexual proclivities are morally objectionable indeed, at least according to some moral codes. That yet again wasn't what I was trying to say. I assume Blanchard has a moral code as well. The idea that Blanchard bases his scientific ideas about paraphilias on a moral code that has yet to be provided in the first place is conjecture.
Paraphilias are unnatural, sexual behaviour for reproduction is natural. That's exactly what Blanchard is trying to say. Sexual behaviour that's natural is normal. Obviously the words normal and unnatural have loads of (negative) connotations as well and yet again invoke morality, so I guess we'd have the same discussion about those.
Again but just in case, I don't necessarily agree with Blanchard's statements.
Last edited by Zylia; 12-14-2013 at 09:37 AM.
An I only thought I was TS, Ha
I agree this is a bit confusing though i dont believe that is what is being said. if you read the beginning of the last paragraph it says,
"In OTHER individuals, gender dysphoria MAY emerge...."
They seem to be making the distinction between your average CDer and those with GD here.
Too many equivocations tacked onto the original theorem are, using Occam's razor, inherently bankrupt. The whole falls apart when it requires those kitchen sinks be bolted to it to approach what is, at best, a poor approximation of a bad analogue of a questionable reality.
In more direct words, a pile of BS.
ALWAYS plan for the worst, then you can be pleasantly surprised if something else happens!
"The important thing about the bear is not how well she dances, but that she dances at all." - Old Russian Proverb (with a gender change)
April, this was misquoted and has been resolved. See posts #18-20.
Stevie and Zylia's discussion of purpose or function is splitting hairs, disagreeing about definitions. Dumb animals don't know if their sexual activity is for making babies or not. Nature gave them a desire to have sex. And so they do. Lordy, how much sex would humans have if they didn't know that babies could result?
Well the description of Transvestic Fetishism is a pretty broad one and I find that I can fit into it fairly well. Nevertheless I feel that the jury is still out. I once had a discussion with a Dutch woman GP who pointed out that a problem the medical community faces is that there is a self selection amongst the people whom they see. They are almost all people who have an illness and they rarely have a chance to "treat" or examine in detail, large numbers of healthy people. She felt that this tended to skew their understanding of the "health" of the entire population.
Likewise, most psychiatrists and psychologists see TG people who are in some way or other struggling with some aspect of their lives that may involve their cross-dressing. Of all of the people who are members of this site, I wonder what percentage have spent a significant amount of time in counseling. My suspicion is that it is small. Most of us have worked out a life style that more or less accomodates our cross dressing desires and needs and have never sought intensive counseling .So the population available to for Blanchard et al to study in detail is probably small and self selecting and therefore perhaps it is skewed. I wonder how this affects the conclusions and consequently the definitions that are proposed.
I was trained as a scientist and I wonder how the theories and hypotheses of science would be affected if we were only able to observe a small subset of a particular phenomenon. Might this apply to the proper understanding of cross dressing and related phenomena.
Considering where the study came from I don't put much stock in it.
Sounds like a bunch of windy BS coming from someone who is paid to write his/her opinion down.
They seem to always include masturbation or BDSM as part of the equation I do neither when dressed.
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