Cogiati test

[Kathryn Martin]

I don't really see these traits so easily separated as inherently male or inherently female.

Interesting though...either way.

Shananigans, I am with you completely on this one. There are many women who are excellent at orienting themselves in an unknown environment, get cars zipped in backwards and around the corner etc. What I find most interesting about the test is actually the attempt to create an inventory that would allow some from of determination early on. Since I first took the test I have learned that my need to determine if I am a transgendered or transsexual person has no easy answer. The creation of typologies such as the test does is really quite dangerous in my view. Blanchard, the guy who created the hypothesis on autogynephilia, which is now in danger of finding it's way into the DSM 5 in it's revised form (his disciple Zucker was made head of the working group that will determine transgenderism) types us all as deviants and paraphiliacs. He says that all transgendered people, unless they are attracted to their birth gender, are sexually aroused by and romatically involved with their inner image of themselves as females, hence auto-gyne-philiacs. His paper "the Concept of Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male Gender Dysphoria" states: ...that nonhomosexual type of gender identity disorder is characterized by an abnormal tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought of being a woman". Those of the test subjects that reported evidence that did not fit into the expected outcome of the study were simply called liars: [these] were consciously motivated by the desire for sex reassignment to deny all sexual behavior, whether or not this was accurate". While clearly on a different level, this study, like the cogiati test attempts to occasion a result through the framing of the questions which then lead to an anticipated result. They are in a word pseudo- or bogus science.

I am of the view that the only way to fathom the phenomenon of transgenderism is in fact to develop a phenomenology of gender, which in my view would yield an understanding that gender is not a dichotomy and deviation from the assigned gender roles not an illness; but rather that gender is a continuum and the location of the individual on this continuum describes their gender without resorting to typing, or the misunderstood dichotomy we consider the norm in our society.

I am glad you said what you said, thank you

Kathryn