@
Pikachu I looked up those PDF's you posted and read those reports.
They confirmed what I had anticipated from the perspective of basic psychology.
All humans have a profound social need to be accepted and included among their own family, tribe,community and culture, including extreme introverts or the most "antisocial" types.
If someone has never experienced generalised social rejection, they have no idea what it feels like, the hopelessness, shame, depression and suicidality that it induces. It does not matter what the issue is, the result is the same.
Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".
Such people have always been born - for as long as humanity has existed - at roughly the same rate in most countries, and with much higher frequency on some Pacific Islands. Intersex variations are also common among mammals. All the traits any human (or animal) can have exist on a spectrum across a range that u. some are average and deemed "normal" while a small percentage, all exist on a spectrum that, on a statistical graph, normally looks like a bell-curve.
People cluster around the centre of the spectrum, making them "average" and societies tend to incorporate that into their norms and values. But a tiny proportion, usually around 1-3%, are born into the extremes of a spectrum that others may find hard to accept.
Except few people object to the geniuses that have helped us live better lives with their discoveries.
And yet I don't think 1-3% is that unusual: across a lifetime, or within any population, one is bound to have met and known these exceptional people - whether they revealed themselves and lived openly, or not.
I've known 7 male-to-females throughout their changes, and have known a couple of a-sexual men who were completely comfortable with their lack of libido: in fact, I'd say they were a good deal more content than most people with normal drives. That was back in my inner-city sculptor days when mixing in bohemian circles falt natural and normal. But even now, in my rural world, there are about 15% of the population who are overtly LGBTQI.
One cross-dresser left her home, wearing a pink tutu, ballet tights and slippers, in a large motorised metal dingy, in the midst of a major storm at 3 in the morning to rescue a family of 13 people who clung to their roof after their house had gone under-water, and succeeded. What matters to me is her character.
Only in recent decades that science has begun to understand gender variations. The rest of society is in varying stages of dealing with the shock to the preconcieved notions our societies have imposed on us.
We are no longer desert nomads warring with other tribes for the same over-grazed pastures. We no longer need to over-breed to compensate for the losses in childbirth, childhood and warfare.
We are literally over-populating the planet.
So there is no longer any reason to value family and heterosexuality as absolutes for survival of the tribe or species.
We can value families of all kinds for love, mutual support and nuturing future generations in hopefully smaller numbers.
But we can also value people who need to lead their lives differently, and who can still contribute and be loving and valuable members of our communities in countless ways.
The studies quoted by Pikachu show that the therapy usually results in much happier and more functional young people. And it seems the studies have found no adverse results.
I would say, if someone is born intersex, or differently oriented, or with a brain-gender different to their physical form -- a more subtle variation but still proven by the discovery of differing proportions of neurotransmitters (hormones) -- and they feel that becoming more like their inner gender would help them find self and social acceptance, then let them have the transition that hormone therapy now makes possible, and let it be on us to extend love and acceptance anyway.
Teh same if they choose to remain as they were born. There is no harm to anyone in either choice.
But there is great harm in not accepting a person as they are or as the person they choose to become.
