Is transgenderism similar to BIID? Please read ALL the details.

It’s totally different. Transgenderism is a sexual orientation, Biid is a phsychiatric condition in which jealousy of amputees or handicapped people is a component. Not the same at all.

One could argue they are similar in the sense that they are akin to having an identity crisis arising from a discomfort with one’s body (not to demean either, if I just came across that way, I apologize). But that’s where the similarities end. With BIID, the individual has a strong desire to remove a limb or sense in order to feel complete. A transgendered individual associates more with the opposite gender than the one they were born with (as in they don’t associate themselves with their born gender at all) and then undergoes treatments and procedures to correct it. And for them, it isn’t so much removal of genitalia as it is a change of genitalia (among other things).

Though considering that especially with transgender females, the surgery has a tendency to have an end product that looks like something out of a butcher shop, it may not be too far off to call it an amputation… Though they have been improving quite a bit in recent years and now I’m going off on a tangent.

I think BIID is a weird neurological problem. Oliver Sacks wrote about it in a book that I can’t remember the title right now. After he badly broke his leg, he suddenly felt like his leg wasn’t his and had a desire to have it removed because it was some odd dead thing attached to his body.

He wrote about a man who woke up in his hospital bed and was convinced that the doctors had played a nasty prank on him. He thought they put a severed cadaver leg under his covers. He wanted to get the thing as far away as possible from himself and ended up tossing himself out of bed trying to do so. For weeks he didn’t believe the leg was his and kept asking to have it removed. Then, mysteriously as the problem arrived, it went away and the man realized his leg was his.

I found out that this problem can happen on a very short term basis to just about everyone. I had it happen to me once. I had a bad allergic reaction to some medicine and my hands swelled up to over twice their size. For some reason, I looked at my right hand and it didn’t seem to be mine. It totally freaked me out that this strange hand was attached to my body. I quickly realized it was an irrational thought, but I still didn’t want the hand anywhere near the rest of me. After a few hours, the sensation went away.

I think transgenderism is much deeper than just feeling like body parts don’t belong to them. Gender is so much more than your body parts. It’s a social feeling about your place in society as well. I could go on about this, but I can’t put my words into thoughts. I just personally know many transgendered people and the choice to change physical gender was so much more than having different body parts.

It’s an interesting analogy, for sure. I think the two are different because gender is affected by hormones. So, one’s gender might not match up accurately with one’s physically-determined sex, but for physical reasons. BIID, as you describe it (and I’ve done no research) sounds like a purely psychological effect.

Just as we came to accept that homosexuality is not a disorder but a healthy predisposition, I think we are moving – in parts of the States at least – to understand that some people just identify as a different gender than their physical sex. It is not an easy issue and can cause emotional pain to oneself or one’s family, but it is not sick or perverted or a psychological disorder. More and more young people in the US – and yet still a fraction of all – are identifying as a different gender than their physical sex. Transgender rights seem to in the place where gay rights issues were some years ago.

I long ago came to the position that my discomfort does not preclude anyone’s right to identify themselves as what they want.

I just wrote a bunch of words about this, then realized that everything hangs on whether people believe that transgenderism is something that happens in people’s bodies or in people’s minds. I think a few people here still think that it is something that happens in people’s minds. I don’t, which is why I see nothing wrong with talking about its causes.

So, for other jellies in this thread: do you see it as an entirely psychological effect? If so, do you also think of homosexuality the same way? If you think they are different in this respect, how are they different, and has that affected your ability to accept people in either group?

I’m not a scientist and I don’t play one on t.v. but I am increasingly loathe to try to separate completely the psychological from the biological.

It is similar from the perspective of the surgeons, who in both cases are faced with a situation where a person wishes to alter anatomy that is normal in presentation. Beyond that, I don’t think we know enough yet about BIID to make a more mental, “internal” comparison.

Incedentally, there is some evidence that apotemnophilia (the example of BIID referred to in the OP) is not a psychiatric condition, but that it is a neurological issue with the area of the brain that maps body image, where people with apotemnophilia lack the part of the map that corresponds to the limb they want amputated, so that sensory input to that limb creates an intolerable discrepancy for the brain. Article.

Transgendered is not a sexual orientation. It’s not about sex, which is a natural part of life, but gender, which is a social construct.

I don’t think they have anything at all to do with each other.

@trailsillustrated Transgenderism is not a sexual orientation; it is a matter of gender idenitity. Sexual orientation has to do with what one is attracted to. People who are born as males but identify as females may be sexually oriented to women, in which case they would be self identifying as transgender lesbian.

^jinx

And let’s not forget that, even tho not widely known, there are many transgender people who opt to change their gender identity (or role in society if you will) but forego any surgical intervention for various reasons. For them, living as the gender with which they identify since a very young age is enough so it isn’t just a physical thing.

As previously mentioned, gender identity and sexual orientation are two totally separate issues.

If there were no categories labeled heterosexual and homosexual and bisexual and everyone were free to love whomever they love without labels or stigmatization, whoever is transgender would still be transgender and who they are romantically attracted to would still be the same regardless of label.

I think that part of the reason why these two issues (sexual orientation and gender identity) are often conflated is because transgender people (of necessity) have kept themselves hidden fearing not only discrimination but violence towards them as well.

But the more people come to know each other the greater is the opportunity for true understanding. And once you actually know a transgender person beyond a mere surface or social sense and have an opportunity for in depth conversation, that’s when clarity emerges.

I have a few transgender friends and with one in particular, I had a real lightbulb moment when she spoke about her brother (now sister) who has also recently come out as transgender.

Obviously, their Mother was a uniquely understanding person who loved them enough to be able to accept that two of her children born as her sons were now daughters.

But here’s the interesting part which truly opened my eyes about the whole sexual orientation issue.

Even tho both she and her (former) brother were now several years post op, apparently she was having a much harder time of it due primarily to sexual orientation issues and the reluctance of most Lesbians to accept her genuinely as a woman. But she was attracted to women and had zero desire towards men.

Her sibling, now a woman was romantically attracted to men and apparently having not much difficulting dating and forming relationships with men either gay or straight.

Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?

So, here were two individuals both born male who were now women but with two separate attractions and sexual orientation labels.

But for society’s need for labeling, whom they were attracted to wouldn’t really matter much and the fact that two transexuals ended up with different sexual orientations would be a moot point.

But I learned a lot from her about many issues, not just this.

And as we all as human beings experience, once you get to really know someone on a deeper level beyond their label, we realize that people are people just like us regardless of superficial separations like sexual orientation, gender identity or even skin color.

And I think that similar to race and being gay or straight, the more people who can relate to transexuals on an everyday basis, the greater will be understanding and accaptance.

In response to your questions, @dappled_leaves, I have heard of BIID before, and yes, it is psychological in nature. The lack of acceptance of one body part or another leaves me wondering if it could be a rare form of schizophrenia, in which the person fails to recognize their own body as entirely real. Clearly it is a mental health condition on which serious research needs to be conducted before even moderate understanding can be achieved.

I do not see matters of sexual orientation (which extends to asexuality as well as the familiar three) as purely psychological issues. Rather, one’s sexual orientation arises from a deeper, more fundamental part of the person. Incidentally, asexuality, or the lack of feelings of sexual attraction toward either males or females, really exists, and does not cause distress to the person. How do I know? I have been asexual for decades, and will remain so for life.

In a similar vein, being transgendered also arises from a deeper, more fundamental part of the person’s being. Hence, it, too, is in no way a mental health “disorder”. Rather, it is the outward expression of who the person truly is deep on the inside. So there is no viable connection between BIID (an essentially superficial, possibly temporary disorder) and transgender identification. Likewise, despite erroneous beliefs to the contrary, transgenderism and sexual orientation are two completely separate parts of one’s overall identity. Here, too, I speak from the perspective of a transgendered female.

Thanks all for your answers. I think a few points need clarifying though.

First, BIID isn’t just not wanting the limb, it is the belief that it is not part of the person’s identity. A person with BIID does not just wish the limb wasn’t there, they will get around on crutches or in a wheelchair to act as they would if they were an amputee. Does this not make it a matter of identity, as much as transgenderism?

Second, a transgender person who identifies as female, but has male DNA and genetalia, is in my understanding a woman. She does not identify with her physical characteristics. She is a woman in every way except for the physical. Therefore her internal image of how her body should be does not match its physical reality. How does that differ from BIID?

Third, the discussion of whether each is a disorder or a normal variant is for another time. Such labels are secondary. Surely we can consider the characteristics of each, and then consider the implications of those characteristics after assessing the similarities and differences?

Fourth, if gender is a social construct, isn’t body integrity also? We all have an idea of what typifies each gender, just as we have an idea of what a complete body is. But aren’t both concepts normative?

Gender isn’t a scientific category, it’s a social construct. You can’t use science to explain it or to refute it.

If gender were a physical reality there wouldn’t be so many definitions and expressions across the world, in this country, in my city, in my house.

A complete body isn’t scientific or normative either. Circumcision. Foot binding. Bodies are defined before we even leave the womb.