h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not with any degree of success no.... Looking like you've gone modly would probably be the result

Or Mouldy, even

some of the paragraphs towards the end do strt to read a bit 'rant-like', although it is clear from the rest of the article that they are not intended that way. perhaps you could try making a bullet pointed list of grievences that various groups have to make it clearer that they are points of opinion and not written in the same 'voice' as the rest of the article. does that make sense?

also, it ios not very clear from the article whether transexual is a term that can be used before medical procedures have taken place. if a person hasnt begun treatment but has the desire to, are they still transgender.





also, it's nice to see someone else has as much difficulty with writting as i do. but the meaning is clear all the way through so the sub ed shouldnt have any problems. probably best to try and communicate with whoever does it though, just in case misinterpretations slip in.


i think this is a good entry and has been well thought out. however, although it is not exactly common for guide entries and perhaps frowned upon as advertising, i do think this is one entry that would benefit greatly from a long bibliography at the end.

HI thanks for the the kind words. I'm going to confess to being a bit think herel, I can't see where the rant is in the final paragraphs, I've just stated there opinions. If you be a bit more specfic i'll be happy to change them.


Also i would love to inlcude a biography but I've included links to all of the sites I've used, I'll see if I can find more and add them.

A difficult subject well handled. Good work!

However, I must agree that so many criticisms of transexualism are included that the piece ends up seeming a bit negative towards transexuals. I wouldn't have thought was your intention! A little more about areas in which transexuals have succeeded and become accepted might redress the balance.

There are also a couple of places where the spelling might confuse the subs. You've used something like 'psychially' where I suspect you mean 'physically', and I don't think there's any such word as 'repugnation'. You could use 'repugnance', but 'revulsion' is a better known word that conveys what I think you mean.

you say "the reason that I'm a bit vaugue on what drives transsexuals is because so is medicine science", but you are wrong.

recent research (the last few years) has discovered a number of regions of the brain that have sex specific configurations.

The first of these, which they named the sexually dimorphic region, they discovered was a different size in ordinary males and females.

when they looked at the brains of transexuals who had completed the surgery for a complete sex change, they found that this region matched the expected size for the sex that they had changed to.

There are now a number of these areas identified.

The trigger for setting the size of these areas seem to be exposure to certain levels of sex hormones during development.

If you don't get the right amount of hormone at the right time, then that region stays female.

Thus where the article says that the male to female transexuals haven't changed sex, they are right, they are still female, just in a female body.

I hope this helps. you can find more on this by searching google for "sexually dimorphic region".

That research is not entirely conclusive, it's the result of only a small number of studies, and there remains the possibility that hormone treatment could cause the observe changes in the brain.

However, combined with other indirect evidense for a prenatal biological cause, this seems by far the most likely origin. Certainly more convincing than any of the other proposed theories (absent father overbearing mother; scared homosexuals e.t.c.)

So it should go in the entry

Ok it will do!, but I'll mention the doubts.......

i think the end bits come across as a rant because, as someone else said, they seem very negative all in one go. i think it is because we are all pesimists and remember the bad stuff more easily than the good.

i'm sure there must be a way to make it read in a more posistive way, but i cant think of one right now......

sorry


FABT

Well I've done a re write is this better? I've reduced the cristism and just outlined it. I've also ended the article on a postive note on how much easier things are now?

What do you think folks?

I thought I'd move discussion of sexually dimorphic regions and such to a seperate thread: see F96593?thread=208541. I'll be interested to see what gets added to the entry.

--

Some more comments on the entry...

> "A transsexual is someone..."

I am a little concerned that this para is a little too much 'they will', 'they will'. Inevitably, some will be human and stubbornly unpredictable. Just the word 'typically' at the start of the para would probably be enough, though. Similarly for 'For a male born person...' later on.

Regarding the perceived negativity of the two 'criticism' paragraphs, I'd structure it into sections like 'transsexuality and feminism', 'transsexuality and homosexuality', 'transsexuality and religion'. In each section, mention some of the sources of conflict, but also some of the areas where there are shared values and aims. For example, transsexuals and homosexuals in the UK share a desire for marriage law reform.

I'd also have these sections seperate from the history bit. After all, Janice Raymond's comments are as valid now as they were in '79 (if they were invalid now they were just as invalid then - if they were valid then they are still valid now).

> "Einar Wegener"

Date hir, if you can: it's pre-WW2 AFAIK, but it'd be nice to get dates.

I do wonder if you could now get away with 'Transsexuality' as a title. If Einar Wegener was the first transsexual, as it appears, then you've not covered recent history: you've covered all the history. Or am I missing something?

TTFN
-Martin

(simulpost)

Well, that solution works too. I'd have preferred to have the criticism kept but re-organised somewhat, but it's fine this way too, and someone can always write a seperate entry on (eg) 'transsexuality and gender issues' if they feel strongly about the subject.

It's not clear to me what "caused by an individuals upbringing into an obsure gender role"

--

> "Femminsts sometimes feel threatened by male to female transsexual who wishes to enter a women only space."

I disagree that this is an issue exclusive to feminists: it's about fear of the unknown and of rape and suchlike, rather than any issue of equal rights and suchlike. There certainly is an issue between TS and feminism, but it's more in line with Raymond's comments than with perceived threats, IMO.

you are right about the fear by women of male to female transexuals being not exclusive to this catagory.

like similar cases, it is down to a sense of violation of trust, like the man in the sauna finding that the man next to him is gay, or the woman coming home to find that her house has been ransacked and someone hase searched her underwear draw.

It is for this reason that the court found against the british government. By insisting that the transexual identify hirself, they are causing a lot of unnecessary problems for both transexuals, and for people with a fear of transexuals.

it is this disclosure that facilitates the bigots, not the condition itself.

Martin...

The paragraph begining a transsexual is... is adapted from the defination of Transsexualism in Clincial Medicine by Kumar and Clarke, I have added the fact that this is the medical definition and like any medical condition not every transsexual will exhbit every "sypmtom". I've also added the word typically to the next paragraph. I think I'd like to keep the form as I have it at the moment unless anyone has any major critisms of that as inserting sections would lead it away from the histroy and more towards a summary of a debate. As debates like this change a lot more rapidly than society's treamtent of transseuxals I've shyed away from including them. Also as so many people have stronge feelings about these then I would have difficulty getting anything through PR!. Thanks for moving the conversation I'll post there in a minute. I've added an explanation to the "upbringing in an obsure gender role" and replaced feminsts with women. Xyroth I see what you're saying, but every deserves equal rights and not every transseuxal has the luxary of having the choice, even if every document on the planet could be changed then not everyone can "pass" as a born memeber of there sex, in the early stages of transion there is a stage where they will be very obviously in between.

I'm interesting in what you were saying about women feeling threatened by male to female transsexual..do men feel threated by female to males?
anyway got to go and do some work I'm on placement tomorrow..


Z

> "gender was not emphasised enough"

I'd have "gender was not strongly emphasised". 'Enough' seems to be saying that not emphasising gender is *wrong*. Tiny thing, of course.

But aside from that little nitpick, great entry

sure, I agree that we need equal rights for everyone, but once your birth certificate has been changed, what is to stop you and your partner from moving to a new town and getting married?

The situation is equivalent to not allowing inter-racial marriages, and forcing every black person who is able to pass as white to carry a blackness certificate, or forcing every jew to wear a yellow star of david in plain site.

on the point of men feeling threatened, those that do feel threatened by homosexual males, due to the same irrational fear of rape and other forms of violation.

I am sure that the same women would feel unsafe visiting a society where mixed bathing was the norm, even though the threat would probably be reduced.

This post has been removed.

as rugby seems to attract more than it's fair share of homophobic people anyway, that doesn't really surprise me.

Well I thought so. Though most of them have been very supportive which rather surprised me!

Are there any more comments on my entry or is it just a case of waiting until a scout drops by

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